Secret to traveling in Europe:

Actually, he's not much of a secret anymore. I have met a surprising amount of people who are Rick Steves fans.

Rick's in my left hand. Thanks Pam! (and i know what you're thinking...i usually try to put flattering pictures of myself on this, since it is all in my control. but. i have made an exception. and anyway, it's just the shape of the gelato making my face look completely round...oh yeah, and bourbon creams, and digestives, and cadbury, and trifle, and john bennion, and gelato.)

we looked for a restaurant in Rome that looked good, and this one looked cute, and then we saw in the window that it was Rick Steves recommended, and then we looked in our Rick Steves book and found out that the owner's daughter is learning English, and then we looked around the restaurant and every table had a very familiar blue book.

Because of Rick Steves, we have spent countless hours listening to my mother read his useful condensed history, laughing at his corny metaphors and descriptions and telling my mother to read more while we drive in the car through Swiss valleys, or drive on the top of the Slovenian Alps, or while we walk in the middle of Polish cities, or whisper in Gothic cathedrals. Rick has been with us since our family lived in Germany in 1995, and he has helped us plan all of our trips around Europe since then. This is the man I'm talking about:

And now, I seriously see Rick Steves everywhere in Paris. At the Saint Chappelle, at Notre Dame, at Versailles, at Restaraunts, at Hotel de Ville, at the Louvre. He is everywhere. And I hid him in my purse when I was in Southern France by myself, secretly reading it, dog-earring pages, and smiling at the couple across from me on the train to the market village; the woman holding the hand of her husband in one hand, and Rick Steves in the other.

He says things like:

-Be forewarned, Ireland is seductive.
-In one fell swoop, Shakespeare made the language of everyday people as important as Latin. In the process, he gave us phrases like "one fell swoop" that we quote without knowing it's Shakespeare.
- While Bruges is one of Europe's most delightful medieval towns, to me it means sugar buzz.

Anyway, this man is infamous in my family. We all laugh and joke about him, and my uncles and aunts and grandparents are in on it as well. He has a show where he memorizes lots of lines and talks while he is walking around in beautiful European villages and he looks like a hilarious American man with glasses, a goofy haircut, and a bit of a gut. One particular show is legendary in my family. I had never seen it, only heard it quoted, until dear Leslie told me you can download Rick Steves podcasts! So I did, and I watched the video my family has been talking about for the past fifteen years. This is that show:

(about one minute and fourteen seconds in, you will be so glad you are watching this.)

Even how dorky Rick is in his videos, and all of the ridiculous things he says in his books, when we come home from trips, or when we scrounge for a room late at night because some disaster happened, and we find Rick Steves hotels that talk about friendly owners, or when we get off a bus and have no idea where we're supposed to go and we're in a foreign country and we have no idea what's going on and Rick says "you can find the TI just behind the bus station," or "walk to your right to find _____ hotel," we can't help but say in the words of my dad, "Rick Steves, you've done it again."