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Passports / Rick Steves / Travel Tips / Travel News / Tours / Tourists / → All Tags

Rick Steves Will Pay for the Passports of Travel Newbies

Travel virgins, Rick Steves wants to deflower you. The travel expert will foot the bill of your very first passport, which usually goes for $135, to get you to go overseas.

Steves wants to encourage first-time jet-setters to go outside of America's borders, boasting the "life-changing, perspective-broadening value of travel" on his website. Of course, he isn't just going to fork over the money. The deal is only good for those who take one of Steves' 2011 tours. The tours, which attract 10,000 travelers a year, schlep all over Europe, including Scandinavia, Russia, Spain, England, Germany, Greece and Italy.

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Los Angeles Travel / Arthur Frommer / Samantha Brown / Rick Steves / Travel Writing / → All Tags

Feel the Warm Glow of Samantha Brown and Arthur Frommer at the LA Times Travel Show

Travel junkies can hang with their more-well-known peers, like Samantha Brown, Arthur Frommer and Rick Steves at the 13th annual Los Angeles Times Travel & Adventure Show. The globetrotting group will gather at the Los Angeles Convention Center on March 19 and 20 for the biggest travel show in the West, with more than 20,000 expected to attend.

Among the headliners, Frommer will chat about "Thinking Outside the Suitcase—Injecting New Life Into Your Vacation Plans," Brown will impart "Lessons from the Road & a Life on the Go" and Steves will give budget travel tips in Europe (of course he will).

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Beaches / Beach Towns / Rick Steves / Brighton Rock / Graham Greene / → All Tags

Brighton Rocks: Rick Steves Finds Solace in London's Beachy Getaway

One of my favorite travel-related novels is Graham Greene's 1939 murder mystery Brighton Rock, because Greene summarizes better than any other writer why people go through the trouble of traveling. In its first pages, he describes the difficulties lower-class Londoners went through for a day at the beach, standing in packed carriages from Victoria and returning home in the bleary hours of morning.

In one of the most beautiful sentences I've read, he explains why they do it:

"With immense labour and immense patience they extricated from the long day the grain of pleasure: this sun, this music, the rattle of the miniature cars, the ghost train diving between the grinning skeletons under the Aquarium promenade, the sticks of Brighton rock, the paper sailors' caps."

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Rick Steves / Travel Guides / Travel Shows / Iran / Books / → All Tags

The Appreciation: Rick Steves

After I graduated from college in 1992, I moved to Latvia for a couple of years to do the expat thing. As I criss-crossed the continent in search of further adventures, I held my trusty copy of Let's Go: Europe close, relying on it to point me toward the best hostels, museums, and cheap restaurants. Let's Go served me well, and I won't speak ill of it, but when a fellow backpacker shared with me an early copy of Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door, I never looked back. I felt Steves' Back Door guides not only contained better practical information, but helped me become a better traveler myself.

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Travel Shows / New York City / Rick Steves / Arthur Frommer / Samantha Brown / → All Tags

Travel Trends at the NYT Travel Show

The New York Times held their annual travel show at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City this weekend. The show caters to both travel professionals and those looking for a deal on their next vacation. Booking stations throughout the exhibition floor let travelers book cruises, international tours or a spa vacation.

The show also lets the novice traveler learn form the best in private seminars hosted by Rick Steves, Arthur Frommer and Samantha Brown. Most of the destinations represented also showcase their unique cultural through food, dancing or everyone’s favorite, freebies.

Walking the floor of the NYT Travel Show it became clear that this year’s political message of taking personal responsibility is being reflected in the year’s travel trends too. Philanthropic Travel, Eco-Travel and given the status of today's economy, less expensive local journeys all took center stage at this year’s show.

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Drug Travel / Drugs / Rick Steves / → All Tags

Smoking Ban Switching up the Crowd at Amsterdam Coffee Shops

Guidebook guru and pot promoter Rick Steves just left the Netherlands, and he's got a substantial update on the marijuana scene in Amsterdam. First things first: Don't bother calling an ambulance after smoking too much because the EMTs will just tell you to walk it off!

But the big news is what's changed thanks to a new smoking ban--that prohibits indoor tobacco smoking but gives marijuana puffers a pass:

The Dutch, like the rest of Europe, mix their marijuana with tobacco. It might seem strange to an American, but if a coffeeshop is busted--it's busted for tobacco. Shops are mixing a kind of herb tea as a tobacco substitute for joints. Coffeeshops with a few outdoor seats have a huge advantage as their local customers can light up outside....

Many local smokers would rather get their pot to go than smoke it without tobacco at their neighborhood coffeeshop.

Thank heavens for American vice tourists then!

Related Stories:
· Lessons Learned in an Amsterdam Coffee Shop [Rick Steves]
· No Impulse Buying Magic Mushrooms [Jaunted]
· Drug Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: jlantzy]

Travel Trendwatching / Rick Steves / Richard Branson / Stephen Colbert / Spirit Airlines / → All Tags

Travel Trendwatching, PEZ Dispenser Style

This quick hit list is all about pop culture travel trends in real-time. Six bits of travel pressed, dry candy pixels for you to digest weekly.

Fame
	Comedy Central Airs Colbert-Branson Water War
	Rick Steves: Legalize It!
	Google Cracks Open the Space Travel Market

Lame
	China Airlines Photoshopping Real Life
	Spirit Airlines Still Figuring Out Email
	Puffer Fish Masquerading as Salmon

Hempfest / Seattle Travel / Rick Steves / → All Tags

Hempfest Post Mortem: Rick Steves Is Pro Stoner

Sixteen years ago, 500 potheads got together in Seattle to celebrate none other than that sweet Mary Jane. This past weekend, thousands of 4:20 fans hot boxed their way through heinous I-5 traffic to get to Mecca: Hempfest 2007 in Myrtle Edwards Park. The glorious weekend of weed-themed festivities is one of the few occasions where local police turn a blind eye to the illegal habit of toking--even in public.

The free event was run by a massive volunteer crew (with, we suspect, a serious case of the munchies) and included live music, a bong-a-thon and an entire convention center of hemp-based products. It also stirred some healthy debate about the war on drugs. We took special note of comments made by our friend at NPR, Rick Steves, host of our favorite radio show, Travel with Rick Steves. As it turns out, even he likes to burn, and he's in favor of legalization. He told the Seattle Times last year:

Nobody should think that Europe is down on hard drugs. They just don't clog their legal system with a lot of innocent pot smokers. Our program is so laughable, wasteful and counterproductive.

Seems his views haven't changed much since then. Even if he didn't get high, Steves was vocal this year on in his support of those that did. He told a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

I'm not going to sit at (Edmonds') Fifth and Main streets and smoke a joint, but 800,000 people in the U.S. were arrested last year for marijuana while in Berne (Switzerland) they're in public, smoking and playing backgammon and not bothering anyone. It (criminal prosecution) forces people into the street to deal with scary people. It's just so wrong.

Steves has got a point, but right now, we're still reeling from the contact high.

Related Stories:
· Travel Guru Stands Firm on War on Weed [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
· Seattle Hotels [HotelChatter]

[Photo: Oregon Norml]

Restaurants / Guidebooks / Rick Steves / Travel Weekly / → All Tags

Finding Florence's Top Tourist Haunt

Even though we mentioned Rick Steves yesterday, you've got to be careful when it comes to the Euro travel guru. That's because you're not the only one who's heard of his guidebooks. (And that's one reason we like to pack Rough Guides.)

But why skip the Rick Steves advice? Because of this item in Travel Weekly's answer to Page Six, Travel Confidential:

While in Florence, she and her husband consulted "Rick Steves' Italy 2006" to find a restaurant that was popular with locals and not a tourist trap. They decided on Trattoria Nella. When they walked into the establishment, they discovered a packed restaurant and spotted six tables with -- you guessed it -- copies of "Rick Steves' Italy 2006."

Doesn't sound too "back door" to us, Rick.

[Photo: maggi.m]

Related Stories:
· Travel Confidential [Travel Weekly]
· Adventures of Link: Sunday Papers [Jaunted]