Rick’s New Best of Italy Video

Are you asking about the "Italy’s Highlights" show?
(Haven't seen it yet but it's linked in "TV Shows" under the "Watch" section of this website)

Is this the show? The date on the closing credits is 2025.
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show/italy-highlights

RS has covered the same places for decades. Public TV shows are a vehicle to sell guidebooks and tours - I don't blame them for sticking with what works even if it's the same old same old. FWIW, here's a recent conversation about a similar topic on the Iceland episode. https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/am-i-reading-this-correctly

Thanks, I changed the title to Italy Highlights on my post.

Just watched it on PBS. Yeah, I was disappointed. I kinda get it though, he is getting old. I think his audience is pretty old too for the most part. These videos are mostly for people like my parents who are older and are just starting to explore Europe.

Let’s face it, what you can find on YT today is much more comprehensive and more up to date than his videos. I still love RS though and have a lot of respect for what he’s done and the person he is.

I still watch his shows everyday on PBS during lunch and can quote his lines. It’s one way I can escape to Europe in between trips.

I understand the disappointment of thinking there's something new and then it's the same stuff us long time watchers have already seen. But honestly I don't think there's much for Rick left do to in Italy.

Are there great towns he doesn't cover? Yes.
Do you have to go on your own and find this out? Yes, but his whole goal was to encourage people to step out on their own and ditch the conventional tour and give people the information and the tools to explore on their own.

And now it's so much easier and it's assumed that you can just book some tickets and set off on your own, but Rick has helped make that way over decades. I'm sure his vision is that you learn the tools and explore the country outside of the tourist locations on your own. Love Italy so much you've been everywhere he covers? Great! Go out and find your own "backdoors" that don't have tourists mobbing it because Rick doesn't cover it.

I think it's entirely appropriate for him to stop covering yet more of Italy and move onto Turkey, Iceland and the Baltics instead because that's the new frontier for travel where people need good information from a trusted source. I remember way back when Rick said he liked Italy the best because "It is as close to adventure travel you can get in Europe." But (north of Naples) that really isn't as true now as it was in the 80s and 90s. But I bet Turkey feels that way relative to well understood Europe.

My $.02 as someone who used Rick's "hotel fax room request" template page from the back page of his book to request rooms way back before reliable email and websites.
=Tod

I can understand your disappointment, thinking this would be new information since it’s a 2025 version.

”Rick has helped make that way over decades. I'm sure his vision is that you learn the tools and explore the country outside of the tourist locations on your own. Love Italy so much you've been everywhere he covers? Great! Go out and find your own "backdoors" that don't have tourists mobbing it because Rick doesn't cover it.”

Tod, that’s exactly what happened for my husband & me. For the example of Italy, we started with the 17-day Best of Italy tour back in 2006, and I read the entire guidebook in preparation. Fast forward to today, and I have stayed in 49 cities in Italy that are full of “backdoor” experiences, have inexpensive activities, fantastic food and aren’t mobbed with tourists. I will always be very appreciative of the foundational knowledge the RS tour & guidebook gave me to travel this way.

Similar to Jean, but my husband and I didn't start with a tour - we just started with Rick's Italy guidebook in 2000. I've now stayed in 65 places in Italy and day tripped to 60 others. I got started with Rick because a well-traveled friend said that when she chose a lodging on her own she was disappointed but when she stayed in one of Rick's recommendations she was pleased. (Don't pile on about the fact that this is not true, or maybe no longer true.) I am grateful, after 22 trips to Europe, that she recommended Rick's guidebooks to me.

I know any criticism of Rick Steves is a very sensitive matter on this forum, so let me start by saying that I fully appreciate and respect how Rick Steves has helped many people get comfortable enough to travel around Europe on their own.

Having just returned from a hiking holiday in the Cinque Terre region of Italy, I was curious about what this new show would say about this area of Italy. Especially since he helped make it popular with North American visitors.
I can’t speak for the other areas of Italy covered in the show because I wasn’t there in recent years, but as soon as I saw the segment about CT it was obvious that this was filmed many years ago. And indeed. It turns out that the footage and voice-over of the Cinque Terre parts of the “new” show are taken from the 2014 special about Cinque Terre. This means that the images and text are at least 11 years old. A lot can happen in 11 years and a lot did happen for CT. Yes, the streets, buildings and the scenery still look the same, but the crowds do not. I was there in the 2nd week of October and the crowds were still absolutely crazy. I was prepared for crowds and okay with it, because for us the hiking from one town to another was the main purpose of the trip. But still. Especially Vernazza nowadays looks nothing like how it’s shown in the new episode. The crowds were literally wall to wall in some smaller parts of the Main Street. And that was on a normal day in October with no cruise ship in the area. I shudder to think how the crowds are in peak season or with a cruise ship there. We had originally planned to spend a couple of hours there, but we grabbed a focaccia to go and quickly went on our way to the next town.
So those that watch this show thinking it was shot in 2025 will get a very wrong idea about the level of crowds in CT.
I get that production costs are high, but it would be nice if there was at least some indication that these are not recent images. Or maybe even better, a reflection in the voiceover on how tourism to this area has massively increased since the show was filmed and how that impacts the area. After all, he was there himself recently on a holiday with his girlfriend so he will have seen it with his own eyes.

I got started with Rick because a well-traveled friend said that when she chose a lodging on her own she was disappointed but when she stayed in one of Rick's recommendations she was pleased.

My question, then, is how to reconcile this view with other opinions expressed in the thread that RS has given people the tools to travel independently and find your own backdoors. Guidebooks help identify attractions to visit, quality places to eat, good hotels to stay in. I'm curious how people are doing this in towns omitted from guidebooks (RS or others) and discovering their own great adventures.

John in CA, Rick has become more 'a style of and attitude about travel' for me rather than "Ooh, Rick says go or stay here, so I must do what Rick says in his guidebook." Sometimes yes, many times maybe or not at all.

I'll skim through Rick's guidebooks, this forum, blogs, and TV episodes time to time for ideas or to search whether another traveler has been to a place I'm considering visiting to see what they have to say about it.

For hotels, I rarely if ever use Rick's guidebook recommendations. Last time I did was in Assisi, and it worked out okay. I had a bad experience with a past RS recommendation (looking at you, Munich), and since then, I do extra homework by Google mapping, clicking on hotel websites, and reading reviews from Booking, TripAdvisor, Google Reviews, etc. before deciding and booking directly with a hotel. Most of my hotel stays have not been in Rick's books.

Bringing my reply back to RS's videos, I haven't seen the Italy Highlights video. Highlights compilations I am enjoying, though, are snippets from Rick's shows that our DC-area PBS affiliate is airing in the 10-minute filler period before the top of the hour. WETA UK airs bites on specific topics such as art history, the Roman Empire, the Reformation—they're quick refreshers and fun reminders of the mini history lessons in each episode. These short repeats I don't mind at all.

”…RS has given people the tools to travel independently and find your own backdoors. Guidebooks help identify attractions to visit, quality places to eat, good hotels to stay in. I'm curious how people are doing this in towns omitted from guidebooks (RS or others) and discovering their own great adventures.”

When I mentioned that the RS tour & guidebook gave me the tools to travel independently, they taught me how to approach a city & the time there, how much I could reasonably cover in a day, what attributes are important in a good hotel - location in the center of the historical area as a top one, a little quirkiness can give it character, etc. (By the way, I never go to a recommended restaurant in the guidebook because I am not interested in eating with all of the other tourists who read the book. And for hotels and B&B’s, I search on Booking.com - never the guidebook.)

I doubt that I would have packed as lightly initially except that our first RS tour presented it as a requirement at the time. The info about riding the trains, etc. in the guidebook helped me a lot and saved us money. Ditto with buses, etc. And the importance of learning more than “hello, please, thank you” was mentioned in the back of the guidebook.

The foundation of the RS tour & guidebook gave me the tools & methods to think how to approach a city, any city. And how to be respectful to the locals (although I first learned it during the People-to-People Ambassador program in 1975.). Lots of travel experience has now given me research methods to find those special backdoor experiences. Although I now purposely try to stay in cities that aren’t in his guidebooks, I think the way I travel strongly reflects the initial influence of RS.

nicely put, Jean

IMO Rick is an icon but yes, I was disappointed. So many changes since his older videos were filmed. I felt like there was no effort to update the video. He was in Italy, why not just shoot more current scenes? Talking to the camera from the train could have just as easily been shot from the current Trevi Fountain location showing the new set up for lining up. Still a fan but . . .

Jean, agree with Nigel, your post sums it up well.