Best RS advice

The best advice I learned from Rick Steves was on his TV program about the Jungfrau region. I had never heard of Mürren and when I saw his program and his walking about in Mürren, I knew I had to visit!

We didn’t travel during peak season as per usual but we were there in mid May 2014. Daffodils, cows, and the most crystal clear view of the the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau! We made a picnic lunch from the Coop in Mürren, another of his suggestions, and had one of the best times of our life.

Too numerous to count.

Just one example that come to mind: The Night Watchman's walking tour in Rothenburg. I probably would have just rolled my cynical eyes and avoided something that looked cheesy. I would have missed out.

One of the many site specific great pieces of advice was more in the way of giving the information that elevated my experience of a place immensely. I was with a small group (not RS) two week tour of Turkey, and we were let loose in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar for three hours. Most people just wandered around aimlessly, staying on the main routes. I took the map of the Grand Bazaar from the RS "Istanbul" book, and, following its suggested route, found amazing, less touristed "hans" and side pathways and coffee shops that made those three hours some of the best of the trip.

Hmmm, does site specific advice from an RS guide count? If so, Rolinka led our Best of Paris tour thru d'Orsay back to the escalators and that piece of advice is the one I repeat most often, especially if someone is trying to do a short visit. I'd been there before and had never found them. After that I knew to look for the escalator icon either in museums or the Metro.

I don't have specific examples, but the very particular, logistical things are very helpful. For example, "there's a lesser-used entryway on the east side, in the alleyway, going in there avoids a long line" or "buy a combo-ticket at the church down the street, it gets you past the ticket line".

I also really liked the Heart of Rome walk, especially the suggestion to do it at night with the lovely lighting.

One of Rick’s most helpful recommendations is when to be someplace, for minimal crowds, best atmosphere, glorious sunsets, etc.

He says be the last one off the Acropolis in Athens. Sure enough, on a crowded day in April, rather than heading down with the masses 15 minutes before closing, we waited until the last moment before we had to exit, just ahead of the sweep guards. We got some better photos, one more, less-crowded look at the buildings and the layout, and weren’t in an absolute mob heading down the stairs, so it was safer, too.

Unless weather makes that strategy undesirable, it also works at ski areas, too. Always stay for “last chair!”

If there is one general site specific rule, that we follow Rick's advice on, it would be to buy site specific entrances, tickets, ahead of time, in the manner that he suggests, when he says it is important to do so. And if that isn't possible, we've learned to visit sites at the time of day that he recommends. If there is one central theme to any RS Guide, it is how to avoid waiting in a long line.

Another, which is relatively new advice, regards the “Hawk Walk” in Connemara, Ireland. Rick says you didn’t know that was on your bucket list, until you do it. He should mention that their extended walk, where you get time with their Eagle Owl, too, is the way to do it. It seems almost anyone posting in the Ireland section on this forum now mentions that the Hawk Walk is on their agenda.

I understand other places have similar falconry experiences, but I don’t know whether they’ve been in operation for a long time, or are joining a movement. This past Sunday, 60 Minutes re-aired a story about Mongolian falconry with Golden Eagles, not a tourist attraction, but a way of life for over a thousand years. The experience is very cool, especially when your guide is handling the mouse heads and other treats used to entice the hawk to land on your gauntleted arm!

Get a general overview of large museums by visiting the website in advance and have an idea of what you want to see. It doesn’t have to be a military drill but if the modern paintings are on the second floor and that interests you more than endless Madonnas, then perhaps start on the second floor. Also, that museum gift stores often have nicer and more unique souvenirs than the souvenir kiosks on the street.

Spend money to save time.

In Prague, follow Rick's advice for which entry gate to go to and when, to have 10 or 15 glorious minutes (nearly) to yourself in the castle Cathedral.

I agree about the Night Watchman in Rothenburg and the Hawk Walk at Ashford Castle. I would add the Sunday Morning church service at the Augustiner Church in Vienna, as well as his information about cheap standing room tickets to the Opera in Vienna and the Haus of Musik museum. I also find his recommendations for tours (Mad Max in Bath and Rabbies in Scotland) to be helpful. What I find most useful about Rick's guides are the detailed instructions for using public transportation to get places.

How to exit the Sistine Chapel via the shortcut to St. Peter's ... used that one twice!

In Vienna, I loved the advice for using the public transit trams - rather than the more expensive tourist Ring Tram - for a DIY Ringstrasse tour.

The advice "assume you will be back." is extremely helpful. It is so tempting to think that you have to put everything into one tour or trip. If you assume you will be back, then a lot of the pressure is gone.

Nothing site specific but for all the places I visit, I generally I try to live in the moment and not plan every minute of every day. Don't be shy about engaging strangers in conversation.

Can't remember the exact museum, but RS map showed a restroom halfway up a staircase -- door was disguised, stair railing was the door handle. That one item got my husband to appreciate RS books.

Is there really anybody like Rick Steves (and his saavy co-authors, research team, and local guides/cohorts), for backdoor tips and secret passageways? While he’s almost exclusively focused on Europe, what about someone with insider advice on the rest of the world? And do travel gurus based elsewhere in the world offer advice for places outside their country?

Many other guidebooks offer excellent listings of sights, lodging, food, and activities, but none seem to have Rick’s extra advice for saving time and money, and minimizing stress.

Pack light. Except his packing list and recommended bag are twice what I carry (both size and weight).

One of Rick’s most helpful recommendations is when to be someplace,
for minimal crowds, best atmosphere, glorious sunsets, etc.

Cyn, you mentioned that advice for Athens, Rick also has that advice for Carcassonne;

"Medieval Carcassonne is a 13th-century world of towers, turrets, and
cobblestones. Europe's ultimate walled fortress city, it's also
stuffed with tourists. At 10:00, salespeople stand at the doors of
their main-street shops, a gauntlet of tacky temptations poised and
ready for their daily ration of customers — consider yourself warned.
But early, late, or off-season, a quieter Carcassonne is an evocative
playground for any medievalist. Avoid the midday mobs: Spend the night
here, and let this fairy-tale town make you a kid on a rampart."

I was there on the RS Loire valley to the South of France tour in May last year, and it is as described during the day. Thanks to the guidebook I had anticipated this and had planned to be out in the evening and early morning as well and got spectacular photos of sunset and sunrise.

Pam you asked if specific guide advice counts, and yes it does. On this tour, while I was prepared on how to avoid the crowds, I wasn't aware of a specific location for sunset. Our guide, Virginie, took us outside the walls to a bridge and had timed it for a spectacular view at Sunset.

I recall in one of Rick's books he said if you find yourself somewhere needing a meal and aren't sure if any nearby restaurants are worth it, choose for a view or ambience. And we've done so many times, having lovely memories of the experience without really remembering the food. Very seldom has the food let us down that badly either.

Allan, that’s tremendous that you got to witness a special moment in Carcassonne! There’s nothing better than a Local with knowledge about things like great viewpoints, shortcuts, hidden secrets, and the like. My guess is that Rick gets a lot of his tips from Locals and guides, then generously shares them with his readers.

And he seems to be a big Sunset Guy - with advice for Hydra and other places in Greece, the Cinque Terre in Italy, in Spain, in Provence and along the coast of Northern France - probably a lot more. For years now, his sign-off image on his TV programs has been him sitting over a sea view at sunset, drink in hand, in Greece, I believe.

He seems to be a big Cave Guy, too.

When we visited Budapest for the first time, with our children, in 2011, we looked for a place to stay. Rick suggested "your Hungarian aunt and uncle, Istvan and Maria". We stayed with them in 2011, and again in 2015. Very nice people. They are no longer in the tourist room business, alas.

It wasn't in a book, but when I heard RS speak at an event once. He reminded us that the worker at the post office in Italy and the cashier in France were not on vacation. It's not their job to entertain us or make our vacations easier/nicer.

Site specific? At the Borghese, be sure to book tickets and start your visit on the second floor. Then, when everyone else is done with the incredible sculptures on the first floor and go up, you can go down and have the space to yourself. BEST advice ever for a museum. And, it lends itself to any experience like that. Go away from the crowd and then circle back.

Yes, what Debbie said about avoiding the crowds and circling back. We followed Rick's advice at Versailles - arrived mid-morning and toured the gardens, circled back to the Palace in late afternoon. Oh, and what he said about Giverny: "Go if you love Monet more than you hate crowds!"

I've only read a couple of articles and seen a few vignettes on public television. He's on the ball with the main cities in Britain, and Cambridge is worth much more of a visit than Oxford. I also love Rothenburg, way before he wrote about it.

He's way off base when it comes to tipping.

I can't remember which city it was, but Rick's advice was "stand with your back to the train tracks and the ATM is on your right and the restrooms are on your left". While the guidebooks can have missing or out of date info I will always keep buying Rick's guides for their very practical info. His museum and city guides are the best of his series in my opinion.

One more. His Rome book recommends Through Eternity Tours as one of the guided tour companies to consider for tours of the Colosseum/Forum or of the Vatican. Quite simply, it is the best tour company I've ever used anywhere. The guide brought the ruins in the Forum and Palatine Hill to life in a way we never would have got on our own. The Vatican was the same way, our guide gave us the history behind the art and what I discovered is that while I don't have an appreciation for the actual art, when I look behind the canvas, I'm fascinated.

How to “skip the line.” That’s a life saver when traveling with kids. Actually, I wouldn’t stand in long lines even before kids.

Best advice we got when we were planning our 1st trip to Italy (sorry it is about the Trying to see too much)

"travel like you will be back"

lo and behold... we have been back and didn't need to cram every corner of Italy into that first 16 day boots on the ground trip.

When I have never been somewhere, I love to read his guides and use his rankings of sites to see as a starting point for my research and planning. I have also really, really enjoyed some of the walking tours. I know there are things I would have otherwise overlooked.

Love this thread, the best advice for me is to travel light and travel like you are going to be back. These two words of wisdom have helped create some memorable trips.

Sandy

If you don't like something, change your perspective...or words to that effect. This is one of my favorites.

A piece of site specific advice that has enhanced all of our travels - take the 69 bus in Paris. We enjoyed using that bus so much it spurred us on to make a game of finding the equivalent city bus in other cities we visit in the US and Europe. It also has gotten us up out of the metro (or tube, subway or whatever it’s called in a given city), admittedly usually the quickest way to get to where you’re going, but not always the most pleasant, scenic, adventurous, serendipitous or even most convenient. When deciding on an intracity transport option, we check the city mapper app for routes and often choose walking or a bus on the surface streets over the underground option - even if it takes a bit longer.

I'm late to posting to both the best RS advise and the least used RS advise. While walking today listening to RS Europe audio app I realized that I seldom used his Italian guidebook either for tour prep or during the tour. This website with travel tips, explore Europe and this wonderful forum were better sources of info, plus RS Europe Audio app. This sounds both negative and positive but without Rick Steves none of those sources would be available.

As I sift through my memory for the best advise, three things come to mind:
1) pack light - I didn't think I could do it but I did.
2) wear a neck wallet - I didn't like the feel of a money belt, but a neck wallet added to my sense of security.
3) have an open mind - I already knew that from traveling years ago, but it's good to be reminded, as is "no grumps."

As I sift through my memory for the best advise, three things come to
mind:
1) pack light - I didn't think I could do it but I did. 2) wear
a neck wallet - I didn't like the feel of a money belt, but a neck
wallet added to my sense of security. 3) have an open mind - I already
knew that from traveling years ago, but it's good to be reminded, as
is "no grumps."

Horsewoofie, my wife didn't think she could pack light either, but she did and she brags about it now. But she won't do carry-on only because she can't (won't?) scale down her large liquids for makeup and stuff. I agree so much with the sense of security with the neck wallet/money belt, personally I prefer the money belt. When we booked our first RS tour I snickered when I read the no grumps policy, but hey, maybe it works, there were no grumps on our tour.

Best Advice (Beware of pickpockets) Worst Continuing Advice (Money Belts - there are better alternatives). Warned of pickpockets In crowds and public spaces used by tourists by Rick on my first European trip, I was not surprised to feel another’s hand in my pocket in Madrid. Because of the warning, I was protected by a money belt. On many subsequent trips I have come to dislike wearing money belts or even belt wallets tucked in my pants. Not only are they cumbersome to wear, they are weird to use and don’t know many other travelers besides Ricknics that use them. When I mention them to other travelers or my European friends, I often get laughs. I now use pants and shirts with zippers from Clothing Arts, Craighoppers and I also have found some every now and then at Costco. Friends also like to use a neck wallet. Now I feel protected in reasonable cloths without the uncomfortable things tucked in my pants and the weird gyrations using a money belts.

I’ll say that I agree with being aware of pickpockets but not paranoid. Very few American cities have the population density of European cities and thus pickpocketing doesn’t really make sense as a crime of opportunity.

As several others have mentioned, the travelling light advice and the skipping lines/avoiding crowds advice are what I find most useful.

Just observing, but the parallel “Least Helpful Rick Steves Advice” thread has 3 times the responses of this “Most Helpful” thread. That’s a surprise, but then, maybe it’s not surprising here. Still, I bet more parts of Rick’s books are adopted than rejected. And more are sold than returned. Now, I’m going back to peruse his London guide for next month’s trip . . .

Cyn, just observing your observation and I'm not surprised either, I figure it's just human nature to respond more when there is an opportunity to complain. How many people really go out of their way to compliment good service at a business? If they feel a comment needs to be left it's typically because of a negative experience. Taking a look at this Forum, it appears the two most active posts are the Airline seat issue and the Worst Advice. I posted a couple of topics last week, this one and also Best Day Ever. Combined, neither come close to the comments on either of those two posts.