Rick Steves. Some people love him. Others say that he’s
ruined Europe. I personally think he’s done much more good than harm, but I can
understand some of the criticisms. The point of this post, however, is not a
discussion of Rick Steves as a person or the business he has built, but how he
became one of my primary sources of travel information.
Prior to my 2012 trip to Europe, I was scouring the
internet, television and book stores for information to help plan the trip. Different
websites, shows and books have different audiences, and over time I weeded out
those that didn’t appeal to me or weren’t helpful to what I was planning on
doing. Rick Steves travel material, however, distinguished itself from the
others. His television show was informative and enjoyable to watch and his
books were very thorough. Certainly there were other sources of information
that I used, but Rick Steves did the best job of detailing the sorts of places
I wanted to go to and things I wanted to see. His work thus strongly influenced
my planning.
When the time finally came and I left for Europe, I took one
of Rick Steves’ guidebooks, along with another one from Let’s Go, and several
pages of notes I had gathered over the preceding months. Over the course of my
three and a half month trip, Rick Steves material solidified its dominant
position in my mind by being effectively never wrong. I think there was only
one time where the information in his guidebook was off, but I believe it was a
fairly trivial matter. As a person who values thoroughness and consistency,
Rick Steves won me over by giving me exactly what I wanted. When I got back
from my trip, I knew I would be consulting Rick Steves material again if I ever
went back to Europe.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Rules for comments:
* Be polite
* Be concise
* Be relevant to the post you are commenting on
* Proofread your comment before publishing it