Rick Steves Books

No, you don’t need it, but it would probably be useful to help plan for the “on your own” time.

I would say “Yes!” I don’t carry print copies but always have it downloaded to Kindle so it is always available on phone or tablet. It seems that on tour, you’ll always want to research something that has nothing to do with the tour itinerary. I think that being without access would diminish your tour experience.

The Rick Steves' tour office recommends you bring it with you. Depending on the tour I sometimes only bring sections of the book.

A few years ago, our RS guide told us she wasn't licensed to lead groups in Siena and suggested we follow the RS walk found in the book.

You can also get it via their app.

Wait, don't they still send you one as part of your tour package? They want you to have one so that you can use it to help figure out what you want to do in your free time. That's preferred over having all the people standing around and asking the tour leader what to do and where to eat dinner, etc.

You absolutely want to take it with you. I rip out the pages from the book ( you may not need the whole book) and have them spiral bound in small sections at Staples. Or you can buy the little folders online from the Rick Steve’s website. You’ll be glad for the references and the maps. Have a fun tour.

If you don’t want to lug the whole book around, you can tear out the chapters of the cities and towns that your tour visits. That is what I used to do. Now I just buy a kindle version and leave the book at home.

On my first RS tour (Best of Italy), I had brought my guidebook but one day left it behind at the hotel. We were unexpectedly given quite a lot of free time in a city that I hadn't fully prepared to have free time in. I desperately wished I had the book with me. That was many moons ago before the invention of e-books; as Laura does, I now leave the heavy book at home and download the Kindle version for on-the-fly help, as well as end of the day reference while writing my daily blog post (it's hard to remember all the details).

For the RS Best of the Adriatic tour last year, I didn’t want to carry any extra weight in my luggage that wasn’t needed. My husband & I were spending two weeks in England & Wales before I joined up with the tour, so that was a lot of consideration for what I would carry in my backpack “suitcase”.

I read through the guidebook ahead of time and tore out cities the tour wasn’t visiting. Then I looked at the cities where we would be and tore out recommended hotels and any activity I didn’t want to do during free time. I also read the general info of the countries and tore it out to leave at home to read again later.

By the time I did that a few times, I was down to their map, plus less than 8 pages per city. I bought the little folder to keep the current city’s pages handy in my purse. It drastically lightened the guidebook, and I was happy with what I brought.