For a certain subgroup of anxious but enthusiastic middle class Americans – for those who long to see Paris before they die and want to make sure they don’t miss a croissant or fresco while they’re there – Rick Steves is a bona- fide celebrity. His voice in his popular series of travel guides claims to be bursting with dad vibes; bad puns flow from his fingers, alongside stupid exclamations of wonder at the majesty of the marble pillars. On his Youtube channel and in promotional materials, he tends to wear blue jeans and glasses and fluffy shirts with buttons. A time profile described him as “one of the legendary PBS Superdorks – right in the Pantheon with Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross and Big Bird”. But that exuberant lack of coolness is a hallmark of Steves’ work, not a mistake. His guidebooks are approachable, goofy, and even subtly provocative, insisting that Americans show respect for the people and places they visit rather than the other way around. Thanks to the internet, there are more resources than ever when it comes to planning a trip. You don’t need a travel guide if you have google. And yet, Steves’ empire has miraculously expanded. 2020, he told me, would be the best year ever for his company, which now offers tours abroad, books, podcasts, TV shows, blogs and lectures, all produced by a few hundred employees.
That was before the pandemic, of course. Last spring, travel to Europe was restricted or banned entirely. Italy has been a chaotic center of the COVID crisis for a terrifying time. Steves had to cancel twenty-four thousand European tour bookings and dramatically rethink what he would do while the world remained frozen. Instead of his own routine globetrotter, he mostly had to sit in his home north of Seattle. Steves is sixty-six now, with salty hair and the warm, gentle atmosphere of a public radio personality. In a conversation recently edited for length and clarity, he told me about his early days, when he gave lectures on cheap travel and sold his first self-published travel guide out of the trunk of his car. He was preparing for Mont Blanc, his first trip abroad since March 2020. He told me what the next chapter of travel could be like after the pandemic and why you should always order the drink from the locals. Our conversation was condensed and processed.
Where are you in the world
I’m just sitting here in my lovely little home office in my little town of Edmonds. I gave a lecture at the Rotary club this morning. I took a nice walk.
I know you are a great hiker.
I do a lot of sport when I’m in Europe. My body is used to it four months a year. It’s this hunter-gatherer rhythm that allows me to hibernate in winter and go into the wilderness in summer.
What was talked about in the Rotary club?
Traveling after COVID.
What was your message?
Well, you could bring all the experts together on one panel and they don’t really know what travel is going to be like. My game is if I had to predict we will go back to some kind of normal. Kind of like airports after 9/11. People said travel will never be the same. Well, airports will never be the same, but they are still airports even if you don’t have huge lobbies to somehow slide over and you have all sorts of TSA machines and you don’t have your loved ones taking you to the Bring gates. I think travel will still be travel.
Did you have to cancel a trip when the pandemic first broke out?
Every year since I was a child – around forty years – I’ve planned a hundred days in Europe. When COVID occurred, I had booked every hotel. We wanted to do two TV shows in Poland and two TV shows in Iceland. I wanted to fly to Turkey because I wanted to check in Turkey! Then I had to cancel that. And we had twenty-four thousand people signed up for Rick Steves tours.
Oh my God.
The travel dreams of 24,000 people! They had saved. We just had to tell them: Here is your money back. From the beginning I was determined not to do what I am embarrassed about with many other companies in the tourism industry, namely to keep their money and give them credit. I just told my staff, OK, we want to give back every penny. When the time comes again, we’ll let you know.
You still live where you grew up, don’t you?
To the right. It has a ferry dock. It has a main road. It’s the first real city north of Seattle. I never get tired of it.
It’s interesting to me that you haven’t really moved for such a globetrotter. What is it about?
That’s a good question. I think if you travel a lot – and I’ve lived out of a suitcase for a third of my adult life – when I get home I like to be rooted in my community. Here I am close to nature. It’s nice to just be here and not be Mr. Travel. I’m just Rick who lives on Edmund Street.
Have you ever considered moving to Europe full-time?
No. I like to move around Europe a lot. That’s the funny thing. I played with buying a small, idyllic place, like in “Under the Tuscan Sun” or something, but then I’d have to go back there. I do not want to go back! For me, Europe is the paddling pool for exploring the world. My favorite countries may be elsewhere. I like Indonesia and India and Japan and Central America just as much when it comes to travel, but I have a calling in life. And that’s supposed to inspire Americans to venture beyond Orlando. The practical goal is to get people who have been to Disney World four or five times to give Portugal a try. It won’t bite you.
I was actually planning to travel to Portugal for the first time, right when the pandemic broke out. I was so disappointed not to go.
I know I’m stunned too. But our mantra is: COVID can derail our travel plans, but it cannot stop our travel dreams. On our social media, we started something called “Daily Dose Europe”. I also did this thing called Monday Night Travel. We have two zoom shows every Monday with a capacity of five thousand people. There’s an early show and a late show, or a show with me sober and a show with me tipsy.
So you drink and just. . . talk about travel? Is there a topic?
Yes indeed! Like: “Today we’re going to Scotland, I’ll drink” whiskey! We’re going to eat shortbread and I have my friend from Scotland who woke up at three in the morning to be with us! “
I want to go all the way back. How was your childhood? Did your parents go away before you got married?
My father was a band director, then a piano tuner and finally a piano importer. My mother was just a hardworking housewife. They amazed me with what they could do with three kids. Because we always had a boat, we always had a mobile home, and we always went skiing. Every Friday they would pick us up from school and when it was sunny we would go to the islands. When it rained we drove east into the mountains. They really had that spirit of adventure on a meager budget. Then someone recommended that my father import pianos from Germany. I remember coming home from school one day and my dad said, “Son, we’re going to Europe to see the piano factories!” I thought it was a stupid idea. But I was fourteen years old. It opened my eyes to the world.
You saw that Moon landing in Norway this year, right?
I was with my relatives in Norway, sitting on the carpet and watching Neil Armstrong. I even remember being a slightly self-centered and ethnocentric fourteen-year-old who thought, Well, at home all of my friends are waving American flags like, “Yay, America!” People celebrated it in Norway too, and they weren’t Americans. I was really grateful for that little jolt.
So you just had to go back after that first trip to Europe?
Yes, I’ve been with my parents a couple of times. We were in this wonderful classic train station, the Copenhagen train station, and I remember looking at children with their Eurail passes and their backpacks who were a few years older than me. I looked over at my mom and dad and thought I don’t need you guys for this. Europe can be my playground. And I vowed to return to Europe every summer after that. And at first I was only out to play football. I was a piano teacher. The children wouldn’t train in the summer. I expected to be a piano teacher all my life.
Were you pretty broke when you started traveling to Europe a lot?
Oh, I was very broke. I traveled with peanuts, three dollars a day or something like that. It was my “Europe through the gutter” days, I like to say. And then I got really good at traveling. And I also knew that other people were making the same mistakes that I learned from my own school of hard knocks. And I thought, what a shame. They only have one trip and they screw it up.
