Rick Steves Travel Books

Hello Scott. If you want to see the interiors of some of the big Chateau in France, go to www.Google.com and enter the name of any Chateau. I guess you will see the web adddress of an inernet website for that Chateau. Some of those websites have "Virtual Tour" : it is like you are standing in a room in the Chateau, at any point on the floor, and you can move in any direction : to the left, to the right, or up, or down. At some of those websites, the movement is caused by moving your "mouse" that is connected to your computer. At some websites the movement is caused by clicking on an arrow, pointing to the left, or to the right. I am planning a vacation trip to France, I thought I wished to visit Chateau there (at the Loire River valley, or other locations). But, seeing the "Virtual Tour" of Chateau in France, on my computer's screen, is like being there in the Chateau. Thus, I decided I do not need to actually go to the Chateau. Instead, I will travel at Normandy, to see and experience farm land and the Ocean coast.

What other countries in Europe do you want to see photographs of, from the internet ?

To get a visual picture of Europe, do the free download of Google Earth software, then enable the Panoramio layer of Google Earth and you'll be able to click on hundreds of pics.

Pretty much every city has a website now, where you can get lots of information, photos, webcams, virtual tours, etc. Make Google your best friend. This works especially well for those cities or towns that RS seems to have either forgotten or glossed over.

I also find that once I am on the ground, there are often brochures or low cost phamplets available that provide the "picture" portion of the experience. These make good keepsakes s well.

I too have found that one picture can be worth a thousand words when trying to decide where to go and what to see. I also like the Eyewitness series for the same reason. Call me old fashioned, but how about a visit to your library? I scoured our library's collection of travel/tour books and could then make better decisions as to what to see and which tourbook to buy. And yes, before I get booted from this site...it was Rick's we bought. Happy travels!

One nice thing about using the Eyewitness/DK series as back-up and for the pictures, is that they are worthless for hotels and restaurants since they update so rarely, meaning you can utilize very old versions (think cheap second or third hand copies). That is one book as well that you can reduce the weight by ripping apart and taking only the pertinent sections. After all, the Eifel Tower and Notre Dame do not renovate very often.

Google maps has "street view" for Paris and Rome plus a few other cities in France. Simply search for Paris France after bringing up google maps and then zoom in anywhere... you will bring up an amazing ground level picture that will put you on the scene where you can turn 360 degrees, just as if you were there... look up at the sky and down at the ground. Pretty amazing.

Hi Scott,

You can also check out YouTube. I've used it a lot to look up places I want to see. Some people download their family videos and others make a slide show of their pictures. Just type in the name of the cities you want to see and hundreds of options will come up.

Good Luck!

If you want to images of countries around the world that are beyond standard sights, you might explore www.trekearth.com This is a website dedicated to photography and travel. For photographers it's a great place to get feedback on you pictures, but anyone who posts is supposed to describe the place as well. It's all organized by geography. Have fun exploring the site. Pam