He wrote an essay for the NY Times on the importance of travel.
To help us understand other lands.
On a recent morning, Rick Steves was wandering around the ancient Tuscan town of Volterra with a new crop of tour guides. His company’s trips to Europe are set to resume in February after a nearly two-year pandemic hiatus, and the guides were midway through a nine-day trip around Italy to learn “what makes a Rick Steves tour a Rick Steves tour.” One of the stops on their itinerary was Volterra, a medieval hilltop town whose stone walls are 800 years old. Mr. Steves — who has been to Tuscany many times for his popular public broadcasting show and YouTube channel — was relishing being back.
“We’re surrounded by the wonders of what we love so much, and it just makes our endorphins do little flip-flops,” he said during a phone interview.
That unabashed enthusiasm has fueled Mr. Steves’s empire of guidebooks, radio shows and TV programs, as well as tours that have taken hundreds of thousands of Americans overseas since he started running them in 1980.
Along the way, Mr. Steves has built a reputation for convincing hesitant Americans to make their first trip abroad — and that first trip is often to Europe, which Mr. Steves has called “the wading pool for world exploration.” But he also speaks passionately about the value of travel to places like El Salvador and Iran, and he’s open about how his time in other countries has shaped his views on issues like world hunger and the legalization of marijuana.
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