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Title : standard furniture epiphany

standard furniture epiphany

thank you for being here, i'mrick steves and i'd like to share with you a little insightand some very important practical skills on my favorite countryin europe, italy. my mark of a good traveler is how they enjoy italy. ifsomebody goes to italy and they say, "it was just temper tantrums, traffic jams,people ripping me off, stray hairs, body odor..." i think that person would enjoydenmark a little more. i think that when you go to italy, you have to accept it onits terms. it's a rough-and-tumble country. it's a country a little moredemanding on travelers than other places, but when you know how to travel smartin italy, you're gonna find it's the

greatest place to travel. again, you haveto understand italy to enjoy it smoothly. now, part of the challenge forus, is to actually melt into that society i mean, look at these people here. one ofthem could be a tourist, probably not, but one of them could be a tourist, that couldbe you. and that should be your goal. i love to talk to travelers in italywho are becoming temporary italians, equipping themselves with goodinformation, and expecting themselves to travel smart., and that is important. oneof the keys of italy is to connect with the people. you gotta make it happen. iwas tooling around the countryside in a car one time, i came upon a cheesefestival. when you find a cheese festival

in the countryside of italy, stop yourcar. get out. eat some cheese. it's that simple. you'vegot to reach into the society in order to enjoy it. the italians are great at sitting on anice chair and watching the world go by, you can do it to. you are more thanwelcome to pull up a chair and join these retired italians, and enjoy thatriver of life flowing by. italy has a great joy of its civilization, it reallydoes. i mean you come into a little town here, every summer there's afestival where the older kids are teaching the younger kids howto make a good ravioli. it's a beautiful

thing, and you can be part of that scene. a great way to connect with italy is to understand that the most importantreligion there, in a lot of ways, is futball, or what we would call soccer. goto the soccer stadium, go to the futball stadium. it could be a little tinystadium in a tiny town, or a big huge game, but you'll learn a lot about italywhen you go to the national pastime. italy is two-thirds the size ofcalifornia, with sixty million people in it. it's well-organized, believe it or not,you can get around in a hurry, and there is so much to offer. in a lot of ways, thenorth has a lot of the charm of italy without the intensity of italy, and you gofarther south and it gets a little more

emotional and a little more, i think,exciting in a lot of ways. when you get around italy you've got the trains, andas i said, in the old days, the trains were kind of a fiasco, but these daystrains are very good in italy. you need to use the schedule smartly, you need tomake educated guesses on the language barrier. here we see trains in thedeparture mode. thankfully, they've got the word for "departure" in four languagesbelow that. so, you can always look around and hope that they've got themultilingual aids for you, but even if that wasn't there, i think you couldfigure that out. and when you look at that schedule, you don't need to know theword for "destination," or "departure time,"

or "track," you can pretty much guess whichone of those columns is for that category. now when you're dealing withthe trains in italy, it is important to remember that things don't always go assmoothly as they might go in germany, and you've gotta roll with the punches. wheni come into a train station in italy, the first thing i want to see is this readerboard, because this tells me exactly what the time is. you see in the bottom itsays 14:50. so, it's 2:50 right now, and if you look at the train departure schedule,at 2:45 there's a train going to nettuno, right, and that is leaving on track 14.and you know something, that was five minutes ago, and you know something, it'sstill in the station, isn't it, because if

it's on that board, it's still in the station.there's an example of just heads-up travel. the average travelermight come in and say, "oh, we're five minutes late, we've missed the train." forget theprinted schedule, forget what anybody else told you, go there, look at this board, and you'll see you'vestill got the train-you better hurry because it's probably takin' off anyminute, but scamper on down to track 14, assuming you're going to nettuno, andyou'll be on your way. even the boats in venice now have electronic reader boardsfor their schedules and their departure times. a few years ago thatwould be inconceivable. now, even the

boats in venice are going on schedule. onething unique about transportation in italy is, a ticket is not a ticket until it is validated. you can buy a ticket, you can be honest, you can get ona train, and you can get a ticket for stealing and not using the ticket system, ifyou don't "ka-chunk" it first, right. i love that sound, "ka-chunk." if you've been to italy you knowthat sound. you've got to "ka-chunk" your ticket, and then it says it's used, it's right now, andthe conductor is fine with you. be on the ball that way. one of the keywords in italian for me is "sciopero." "sciopero" means "strike." i don't thinki've ever been to italy when there's not a strike going on. now for some people,"it's a strike, i'm miserable, everything's

falling apart, what am i doing in this horriblecountry." no, this is italy, it has strikes, that's part of the fun, right. now,they're not strikes like in the united states, where for two weeks somebody's on strike, they are generally "nuisance strikes." they're scheduled in advance, andthe train workers are upset about something, and you know, this says itright here, "from 9:00 on the 14th of april until 9:00 on the 15thof april, we're gonna be on strike." that's four days away and they're alreadyannouncing it. that just means you gotta kinda go, "oh, the train guys are upset,"and you gotta either leave early or leave late. or, if you're during that day,there's still trains but they're just ignoring

the schedules. i've worked my way througha lot of strikes all over europe. and what you do is, you go to the station and youtake anything departing in that direction. you just kind of work your way to yourultimate destination, and it's an adventure, and you're right there with the local people, but ya'gotta roll with the punches in italy, it's the mark of a good traveler, veryimportant. driving in italy is both fun andfrustrating, and i would say when you're planning an italian trip, to not try to doall of it by car or all of it by train. give yourself the freedom and theefficiency to do it half and half. remember, you do not want a car in rome,florence, venice, the cinque terre, or

naples. horrible places to drive, okay. youwant to do that by public transportation. by train very easy, and remember, when youwant to rent your car, you simply get on the freeway and you go to where you wantto be. it's not a huge problem to do it in one overly by train, and with anotheroverlay by car. i would say do the big cities by train, and if you want themobility of a car for tuscany, and exploring umbria, and getting up into thedolomites, the mountains, you know, and so on, that's fun to have. one of the favoritedays for me in italy, is the day i turn in my car. it's just, it's a headache to be drivingaround in italy in the big cities and the traffic,

and for a lot of people, public transit is a great thing. on the other hand, if you want to get a car, again, you want touse it in places where it makes sense for a car. just last year i picked up a carat the perugia airport, and i dropped it at pisa. very easy to do, very cheap, and itworked for me very well. i will remind you, there's no economy for having a carfor a long time, a two-week rental just costs double whata one-week rental costs, so, you know, you can take a short car rental, and thensupplement that with your train tickets, and go where you should go by car, andwhere you should go by train. the key in italy for getting around in a hurry by car, is to pay the money, and use

the autostrada, okay. it's not gonna breakthe bank, its gonna save you time, it's gonna saveyou gas, and it's going to be safer to travel on the super-freeway, okay. every 15or 20 minutes, you'll stop and give some money to the toll station, and then you'll carry on. it's like the autobahn in germany, except you gotta pay for it every once ina while with toll booths. know your signs when you're driving in italy, know your signs ingeneral in italy. counter-intuitively, a red circle, even without a slash acrosson it, means don’t go. it's a "zone traffic limited," do you see what i mean. you just wantto be able to read the signs. here's a sign, with a slash on it, that means noparking,

and that means no parking on, you see thecross, that would be sunday or holidays, from eight until 20, that would mean eightin the morning until eight at night, the 24 hour clock, and that says, "exceptresidents or people with authorization," you see the words under that. now i don'tknow any of those italian words, i'm just faking it here, and just go with me.when you fake it, 90% of the time you're right, of the 10% of the time you're wrong, half the time you're wrong you didn't know it, so it didn't matter, that gives you 95% correct ratio, and then you just bull right ahead. down below, "p" for parking iwould imagine, the hammers crossed is the opposite of the cross, the cross is yourholiday, holy day, and then the hammers

crossed is like "hammer and sickle" that’sworkers, those are your work days. monday through friday, or maybe monday throughsaturday, depends from country to country, you gotta be careful about parking fromeight till eight on work days, and that little clock below means if you have a cardboardclock in your clock-in your car, you set it to the time you arrive, you put it onyour dashboard, and it says it's good for two hours. so that's kind of fancycommunication, but that's sort of faking it, and i think most travelers canconfidently guess their way through a lot of the challenges. you do have "carabinieri"and "polizia" on every corner ready to help you out. and it's good with acountry like italy, as crazy, and densely

populated, and full of fun, andsurprises, that there are police keeping order. you will find a lot of regulations,a lot of bureaucracy, and it's just important really to try to understandwhat's going on, for your own safety and convenience. italy is really crowded. thebeautiful thing about italy is, it's, in my estimate, the greatest place to go in europe. what comes with that is, it's the most crowded place in europe. and, when itcomes to italy, all of us are wanting to go to the same five places. rome, florence,venice, siena, the cinque terre, we all want to go to the same places. that'swhere all the tourists are. now, should you not go there? no. those are the bestplaces, you should go there, but remember,

80% of italy has almost notourism, and its gonna be a third cheaper than the most popular places. andthe places you want to go to, within those places i just mentioned, everybodywant to do the same things. when you're in rome, you want togo to the vatican museum and see the sistine chapel. well, that's the crowdright there. that's not a special day, that any hour it's open, it's that crowded.it's gonna be a shuffle like this. a lot of people say, "this is just, you know,insulting, this is dangerous this is stinky, this is, i don't like it."well then don't go there. it's tough, that's just the way it is, emergingeconomies are able to travel now, you got

a hundred million travelers in china,hundred million travelers in india, they want to go to italy, and they don't want to gooff the beaten path, they wanna go where everybody wants to go, the most famousplaces. so you need to be on the ball. there's a lot of very important sights initaly where you can get tickets in advance. whenever you can, get tickets inadvance, it really is worth your trouble. any good guidebook would certainly tellyou where you should get tickets in advance. when there are crowds, there arepeople picking pockets, right, don't be paranoid, just be not vulnerable. i lovecrowds in italy, i like it when everybody's just rubbing againsteverybody else. but i'm not worried about

my wallet, because my wallet is not in myback pocket. my wallet is buttoned in here, or zipped down there, or i'm wearingmoney belt or whatever. if your your wallet has important stuff in it and it's inyour back pocket, if you've got a purse just hanging down there, you'revulnerable, and thieves are going to target you. in italy, the thieves targetamericans, not because they're mean but because they're smart. solve that problemby not having anything valuable in your purses or wallets. you're gonna be incrowded situations, when you're in crowded situations be on guard. streetthieves, in italy especially, they come off as beggars but they're not beggars, they're pickpockets. seems a little harsh,

but i think you got to assume thatbecause they hang out where the tourists are. i mean i can-in my book i say,"watch the thieves work the crowds at the uffizi gallery, and so on." you want to wear a money belt, that's thekey thing. a money belt, you tuck it in like your shirt tail, and you are notvulnerable to petty theft pick-pocketings and purse snatching. eating in italy isone of the joys of all of europe, really. i just- italy has such a wonderful cuisineculture, italy loves to eat, italy loves to cook,italy loves its ingredients, it just

embraces life via the kitchen. i callthis woman "auntie pasta," and she just is symbolic to me of this wonderful joy offood. i like people-to-people eating. i like to eat in the funky littlemom-and-pop places with no pretense. i love to eat down and dirty with the locals.i like a restaurant that's only open monday through friday at lunch. there's- someof my very favorite restaurant are only open monday through friday at lunch, what's thedeal? they're just for workers and they're only open when workers are looking forlunch, you see. now having said that, it is fun to go to nice restaurants, fancy places.and in this case, if you can find a restaurant which is personality driven,it's got the man's name, i mean, this is

him, you know, it's, you know,pepe's trattoria or whatever, you know pepe cares about this. his mom's cookingin the back, the kids are serving and washing, it's just a family show. and forme, the big luxury in italy, anywhere for that matter, is to be able to trust thechef and say. "i'd like to spend 50 or 60 euros, and just give me a meal iwill never forget," and let him bring what he wants. it's such a beautiful thingto be able to do that and he'll, if it's a good, honest chef or restauranteur,they'll take very good care of you. my italian friends love to go out and eatwell, and what they're interested in doing is eating with the region, and withthe season.

italians know, if you go to a goodrestaurant, you can look at the menu and you can know what month it is, and whatpart of italy you're in, by what's on the menu. and if you're going to italy and you'rehell-bent on having, you know, mushrooms, well you should go in the fall. and ifyou are there in the spring, it'd be better for you to eat asparagus. whateverthey're serving, i think that's smart to eat, you want to go with the seasons.another thing very popular in italy these days, is what's called a zerokilometer meal. zero kilometers means everything's right there, raised in that village, raised on thatfarm even, i've had some literal zero

kilometers meals and they're rustic, but boy they are good. and there's something about the terroir, and about how everything workstogether in the heritage, and everything, and in italy they call it-it's a"good marriage," if you have the wine from this field, where the prosciutto came,from where the cheese came, and everything, right there. it's thetradition, it's the soil, it's the sun, it's the name of the family on the labelof the wine bottle. and the daughter is pouring it while grandmas looking on, justbeaming with pride, as this traveler from the other side of the world is drinkingthe fruit of their labor that has been

produced on that farm, by that family, forten generations. that is really quality, you see. there's something about that, thatanybody here could have, if they go to italy, and they eat in the right places. afun thing about eating in italy is family style, and i'm a big fan of eatingfamily style, in fact i like the first courses, they're smaller they're morecreative, they're less expensive more variety. and i like to get a gang offriends together and just spread the dishes around. don't worry about being asophisticate, if you're a tourist you're not really a sophisticate, and if you try to bea sophisticate you just look goofy. be honestly curious about the culture,respectful of the culture. your goal is

to be steep learning curve, to eat yourway through that menu. the chefs gonna love it, and if they notice you'resharing meals, and sharing plates, and cutting it up, and trying it all, they'revery likely to bring you some extra plates just so you can complete yourexperience. that is really a success in your travels. lunchtime. if you like asalad bar here, the equivalent there is an antipasto bar, with all these wonderfulvegetables, and cold cuts, and so on, you just feel the plate up, one simple price, it'svery fast, it's very nutritious, and it's very local, and it's gone, okay, it isgone in a hurry. what you don't want to look for is a bigenglish language sign that says, "no

frozen food," on the most expensive squarein rome. everything's wrong about this. with a menu that’s printed, so it's thesame all year long, in four languages. wrong, wrong, wrong, right, too much rent,too many cliches, too much of a focus on tourists. what i want, is a handwritten, small menu, in one language. handwritten,because it's shaped by what's fresh the market this morning. small, 'cause they're just cooking up what theycan sell profitably for a good price and, in one language, the local language,because they're targeting not tourists, but locals. tourists are more thanwelcome, but this is for locals, and you

can bet, with a local clientele in alow-rent place away from the main square, with this kind of a menu, that'sgonna be a good value. again, a small, handwritten menu in one language, a holein the wall place, mom-and-pop, and if has an enthusiastic local clientele filling theplace, if it just feels successful, you can sit down without too much worry andknow, that's a good value. at lunchtime also, i walk around and at-a-glance youcan see where the popular places are, because all the workers are taking theirlunch break, and they line up for this guy's sandwiches, or they're down at the market andeverybody's at that stall for the soup, and fish, or whatever. you can pretty muchgo with the local specialties and do

yourself a huge favor. i've also found initaly there's a lot of expensive, fancy grocery stores that have a deli section,and in the deli section, the local office workers will go for their lunch, and itis beautiful, home-cooked kind of food, and you eat itright there, on a stool, watching the street action. that is far better thanyour fast food option if you wanna quick, cheap, lunch. marketplaces in italy are adelight, the produce is as tasty as you can imagine. they've got laws that say yougotta say where the produce was from, grown, so people aren't mistakenlyconsuming stuff that had to be shipped, or frozen, and so on. again, they want to eatwith the region, and with the season. i

love a restaurant that is reallythriving and successful. i don't want to go with whatever crowd-sourcing servicethat americans use when they're traveling says everybody wants to go to,i could just feel the vibe, and ask at my my restaurant(hotel), or talk to people in thestreet, where a good place to eat is, and i'll remind you. if you're going to good,popular places in italy, they're gonna be booked out. you need to make areservation. it's just smart. if you've got an idea for a restaurant, drop in in theafternoon, choose a table, give em' your name, or make a phone call, have somebody at yourhotel make the phone call, but grab a table, get it nailed down in advance. ineurope, especially in italy, they don't

worry about turning the table. if you goearly to a restaurant, it's likely to feel like a touristy place. youcan go back later on in the evening to the same place and it would feel like a localfavorite, because americans eat early and italians eat late. this is my favoritesteak house in tuscany, and they've got two seatings, one at seven and one at nine,and its full all the time, you need a reservation because this guy is just-heis famous for his beautiful beef. you've heard of the italian beef and so on, and it isjust-italians love their red meat. and he comes by with his big hunks of beef, youlook at it, and you ask which one you want, and he tells you how much it costs, and then he takes it back there'sreally no choice, it's seven minutes on

this side and seven minutes on that side,and then, "whack," you hear a big hunk being chopped off the carcass that's back there onthe gurney, and its into the into the oven, and then a few minutes later onyour plate. not a friendly place if you are a vegetarian i'll tell you that, butshe's no vegetarian, and that steak's gone, and she's got a lifelong memory. pasta is a bigdeal, i love the pasta. i have a tough time, frankly, in american-italian restaurants'cause i don’t have the ambiance. our pasta can be great here, they can do itall right, but one thing good about eating in italy is, you're in italy. you'resurrounded by all that chaos, and that noise, and that ambiance, and you knowyou're eating local produce with the

season, and that comes with pasta also.know the pastas, know the specialties. if you're in a port, you wanna have seafood, ifyou're not in a port, you might not wanna have seafood. what is it, on mondaysnobody wants seafood because-they probably don't even serve it-because nobody'sfishing on sunday, and the markets not open, and its old seafood. know how to get thefresh food. if you want a maximum experience, a fun little trick in italyis to ask for "bis," b-i-s, because that would be one serving, but split betweentwo different dishes, and restauranteurs are happy to do that,and then you get that chance to maximize, double, your taste treats. i like to eatwith a little group of people, because

then we get "bis" anyways, because we allorder one, and we spread it around, and four people can share each dish. when you're traveling in italy, thecourses are really important, more so than in other countries. you've got theappetizer course, the "antipasti," and then comes the "primi piatti," or thefirst course, that would be your pasta or your soup. after that, "secondi," maincourse, meat and fish, and then you've got your "dolci." the "dolci vita," the sweets. now, ilike to stay away from the "secondi," to be honest, i don't want to have a big, full blown, four course meal, it takes too much time, it's too much food, and it costs alot of money. the most expensive dish is

the "secondi," i find the mostinteresting dishes are the "antipasti," the appetizer dishes. these are really localstyle, traditional, and affordable. and with a group of people, i like to get amix of "antipasti," and a few pastas, and call that the meal, okay. there's nothingwrong with that, and there's nothing wrong with sharing either. wine, boy ohboy. i like to go with the local recommendation. we all know a few namesof famous italian wines, small productions with a huge demand, andname familiarity, and that jacks the price way up. sure, you can get "brunello di montalcino,"but if you go with the local

recommendation, it could be arguably asgood as that, but not as famous, and maybe more local, and a better experience foryou, and half the price. so, don't get sucked into all the big-name wines, eventhough they are great. be able to venture out and try some ofthe local recommendations. a fun part of eating in italy is food tours, and there area lot of food tourists. i was in rome recently, and this was my guide, and shetook six of us around, and we visited eight different little hole-in-the-wallfoodie artisan shops in testaccio, which, for two thousand years, has been thepantry of rome. it's where the big-market has been historically, and so much funfood culture there. you learn a lot when

you take a food tour, it's a long lunchor a long dinner, it cost about 80 bucks but figure it's $40 meal, and a $40 tour, anda real education, a lot of fun. if you like food, and if you like culture,consider those food tours. also, in italy very popular, is cooking classes, andthere's plenty of that kind of entrepreneurial kind of activity going on fortourists. one great reason to tune intotripadvisor, is to find out what are the new businesses going, as far as things todo, and experiences to have. i'm not a big fan of crowd-sourcing web sites liketripadvisor for eating and sleeping, but i'm a huge fan of them to find outwhat's going on there in the way of

small tours. if there's a new zipline,if there's a new bike tour, segway tour, a cooking class, anything verycreative and off the wall, it would be listed in tripadvisor, and then you canlook it up and see if it's good for you. just last year i met one of our tourgroups in florence, and we were learning how to cook, and what was really fun, weprepared it, we cooked it, and then we sat down and we ate it, and it was "delizioso,"i just gotta say that. the chef was right there beaming, as all of his studentswent right from making the pasta to making the tiramisu, and then eating it all.and it was a beautiful experience. that's one of the hits on our tours, and you cando it on your own too, if you like. i'm

not a big happy hour, cocktail kind ofguy, but when i'm in italy, it's a very important part of the customs and theculture. and early in the evening, people sit down, as the sun is down it's cool,the people are out, they've made their money, there's a nice conviviality. sitdown on the most expensive piece of real estate in town, buy a cocktail, it comeswith little sandwiches and munchies, it could even be a late dinner for the costto your drink, but for six or seven or eight dollars you've, got yourself a nicehard drink right there on the greatest show in italy, in this case that's the"campo," the main square in siena. this aperitivo thing is a tradition. itstarted in milano, and bars would compete

by having a whole buffet of little munchyfood that could really put together a plate, and you know be a late meal if youwanted it that way, and it's free if you buy a drink. and that's been sosuccessful in milano, that now, you find it all over italy. all over italy,aperitivo time, early in the evening, bars compete to get customers by putting outfree buffets of food that you're welcome to, if you simply buy a drink. another fun thing about italy is thespritz. these squares would be filled with market stalls in the morning, justwork-a-day for most of the day, and at night, the little bars and cafes spillout into the street, the students gather,

and the sun shines through that goldenkind of spritz glass, and it's a beautiful scene. buy a drink, strike up a conversation, and remindyourself, you are a very interesting person. you're a fascinating person. you speakonly one language, you come from the other side of the world from a land that'sonly 250 years old, and you're venturing now, and you don't evenknow the name of the thing you're drinking, you barely know what the coinsin your pocket are worth, and you're standing there, willing to talk to thesepeople. be bold, have fun, connect with the people,and it helps to have a drink in your

hand, alright. that happy hour time is justgreat. another dimension of fun on the streetsis the gelato, and i think it might make sense to skip the dessert in the fancyrestaurant, and have a mobile dessert. i like to not go with the crowd sourcingor the guidebook, but just talk to local friends and say, "where's the best gelato these days?" everybody's got an opinion, and you go in there, and it's sort of anart form in itself, and the cool thing about it is you get a cup or cone, youget your favorite flavor, and then you stroll, doing the "passegiatta" up and downthe streets. a lot of different flavors, remember don'tget attracted to the garish colors, and

the big mountains of fruit, anddifferent exotic flavors, that's generally fake food coloring, and soon. go with the locals, it's a little moreunderstated, and find the artisan gelato shop, and you'll find the quality isamazing. as far as accommodations go in italy, i really want to stay rightdowntown. it's really important to me to step out in the morning, and be where theaction is. every time i end up getting a hotel that was lined up for me bysomebody else, or some booking service, or something like that, i find myself on abig highway, way out in the suburbs, and i just-there's no characterat all. i think location is critical

that's one thing you'll find in all my books,the location is really the driving factor on which hotels are going to belisted. in italy, a double bed is usually twosingles put together, you can make it up as a double bed, or you can make it upas single bed. you've got friendly, fun people at the desk, this is a greatresource for you to get some advice. i would remind you that it's important tohave a safe, and quiet, and central refuge, because it's exhausting, it's intenseyou're out in the streets it's kind of a battle, it's overwhelming, and when youneed a siesta, you need a siesta, and that's what your hotel room is for. onereason i like my hotel right downtown, is

it provides that place just to let my earsstop ringing, and let my mind just calm down a little bit, because i'm gonnago out again later on. by the way, take a siesta if you have to, but it's veryimportant to be out in the evening hours in italy. it's important to pack lightbecause you're gonna be carrying your luggage a long way. in italy, more than anyother country that i can think of, you can't get the tour bus to your hotel,because the old city centers are nowadays not letting buses in, so, you'regonna need to be able to walk with your gear. and like anywhere in europe, if youstay in bed and breakfast, you get double the culture intimacy for half the price.

this, in italy, is "camera affitti," andhere you're staying with mama rovati. for $100 you got a double room two blocksaway from michelangelo's david in downtown florence, and you're a guest ofthis woman's. it's a beautiful experience. italy is hot. it's very hot in the summer.you need air conditioning if you're there in the summer. in the winter it can becold, and in the fall and the spring, they don't let you heat or cool the rooms, soyou need to either have a sweater or get down to a tee shirt, depending, on youwon't be able to turn on the air con all the time. so, just be warned, energy isvery expensive in italy, and the government prohibits people from evenheating or cooling during those corner

times, and dress accordingly, it's prettyimportant. a lot of old-fashioned rooms come with a bidet. this is my littledaughter jackie twenty years ago demonstrating a bidet, and a bidet,the europeans will tell you, is designed so you can wash things that rub togetherwhen you walk. that's what they say. and it's just-you've got to notuse it for any more than that, it's just for sponge baths, and they're kinda handy,and it's important when you find that strange piece of plumbing in yourbathroom, that you know how to use it. cruising is a big part of italy, and whenyou think about it, the main ports, the main cities, of italy, venice, florence,rome, and naples, all are served by cruise

ships. now, naples, the boat just-the ship justparks there. venice, the ship parks right there. florence, it's about an hour or two away,and rome, it's about an hour away depending on civitavecchia or livorno. also,cruises that stop for florence can side trip up to pisa, or to the cinque terre. i'll remind you there's sort of a scandal going on right now with cruisegroups inundating the cinque terre. if you're on a cruise ship, you should notopt for the cinque terra option, because you're gonna go there with all the othercruise groups and it's literally dangerous to walk on the little pathswhen you're there with thousands of

blitz cruise visitors. it's just badstyle, and i think it's unprofessional for cruise ships to send their people tothe fragile little cinque terre villages because you can't do a little bit ofcruising, it's just thousands of people or nobody at all. venice, florence, and rome, can handletheir cruisers very easily. pompeii, amalfi coast, naples, they can handle theircruise ships fine also. this is a ship docking right in naples, andwhen you get off the boat, wherever you get off your ship, you'll find buseswaiting to take you on tours, you'll find local information offices, and you'llfind, especially in italy, small-time

operators ready to take you on a privatetour. in-the-know cruisers line these up in advance, andfor the cost of four people on the big cruise tour bus, you could hire your owndriver guide, with a car, and have a private tour, which would make, i think, alot of more sense. we've written the most popular, best-selling, cruise portguidebook in the united states for the mediterranean, and it's just designedlike all of our guidebooks except with no hotels, and it's designed for people whohave eight hours in each city, and that would cover italy very thoroughly. if you're goingto italy via cruise ship, it's really a

lot of fun, but you need to have goodinformation so you can use your time smartly. the biggest part of our business,and we employ a hundred people just down the street here in edmonds, is our tourprogram. last year was our best year ever, we took more than 20,000 people on eighthundred different tours. that's about 30 different itineraries, and my favoritestatistic is, about half of those people were return customers. i'm so proud ofthe work our tour guides do, and all of our friends in europe that helpus with our buses, and hotels, and restaurants, and i know that our returncustomers, they have very high bar expectations, and we exceed thoseexpectations. our tours are different

than most, because there's half as manypeople on the bus, 25 people on a 50 seat bus, instead of 50 people on 50seat bus, and, really important, our guides are fully paid up front, the best paidguides in europe, and there's no way they can make any more money off you over thecourse of your trip, because they've already got their pay, they're on your side. sightseeing is included, there's nokickbacks on your shopping, there's no tipping allowed, your tour guide is anexpert, and he is your biggest fan, making sure you have the best possible trip. for25 years i guided these tours, and for the last ten years, i've realized my guides doa better job than i ever could, they're the

specialist, i'm the generalist, and forthe last ten years, every year i take one of our tours. it's just a lot of fun forme just to relax on the tours, and i cant really advertise this, but i'lltell you, the people that sign up on our tours are of the joys of the tours. anycompany, cruise ship company, tour company, whatever, shapes the clientele by howthey advertise their tours. we advertise our tours as rugged, experiential, you'regonna become a temporary local, if things aren't to your liking, change your liking are characteristic hotels are reallycharacteristic, you're gonna carry your own bags, that kind of thing, and you can imagine,the kind of people that join us are

really a lot of fun to travel with, soit's something i'm proud of and if you're thinking about taking a tour, youmight want to check our tours out. this is one of our tours in florence, and thebiggest part of our tour program is in italy. this is our guides here, we have 100 different guides, great guides. this is alfio, one of our italianguides, on the first night, giving people a little bit of a language lesson, singing afew songs in italian, before going out for a walk around town in the evening. iwas-every time i cross paths with one of our groups i love to pal aroundwith them for a while, and it's just so much fun, all of us guides, to give peoplethe lay of the land while we're there, so

they're more confident in doing theirown thing, and breaking away from the group as well. we've got a lot ofdifferent itineraries, and if you look at our map of all of tour routes, italy is byfar the most dense with all those little lines, because that’s-italy is the mostpopular destination for us, and we have lots of different ways to do italy.i'll take just a minute to go through these itineraries, and even if you're notconsidering one of our tours, remember that these itineraries are really smartitineraries, and you could do them on your own, quite easily. so learn fromthese itineraries, and if you're independently, minded let that be asuggested way for you to tackle this

much territory in that much time. this isour flagship itinerary, the best of europe in three weeks. it's heavy onitaly, 'cause we think italy is the country where you get the most value outof having a tour guide and a bus, and it's eight days in italy. you'll notice onthese tours, very few one-night stands. one night stands are inefficient. this isour best of europe in two weeks tour, which starts in paris and ends in rome.and this is our best of italy in seventeen days tour, this is essentially,well this is the best of italy, and we used it in 22 days, but americans havethe shortest vacations in the rich world, so we have to cut down the time, in orderto have anybody who can afford to take

our tour with their vacation allotment.but here you see, flying into milan, two nights for every stop, and finishing inrome. if you just have a short amount of time and you want intense italy, if yougot ten days, imagine this itinerary. venice, florence,rome, three nights in each place, fly into venice, fly home from rome, a threehour bus ride or train ride connecting the cities. now, this would be great even onyour own, this is probably such an easy thing toset up on your own. if you get a ticket into venice and out of rome, don't worryabout the train connections just buy those when you're there,

get on the internet and book three hotels,three nights each. read your guidebook and know what you should book in advance foradmissions to famous sights that are gonna be crowded or inaccessible,otherwise, hire a couple of private guides. load up or download my app, whichhas self-guided tours to all the most important sites in venice, florence, rome,and then enjoy. there's a guidebook for each of those stops, and you could dothat on your own, very, very reasonably. this is the most popular itinerary ofthe thirty itineraries that we offer at rick steves europe. now, if you want thecore of italy, this is this is called the heart of italy, and it's florence and rome,the two great cities plus time on the

beach, and time in a hill town. my favoritebeaches are port towns, the cinque-terre, and my favorite hill town,volterra. i took once, this village italy tour, and i was attracted to it because ididn't know any of the names of those places that we're stoppin. it's reallyinteresting to go to italy, and to stop in places that are, you know, obscure, andmeet artisans, and do hands-on cultural activities, and this is a very populartour it's called village italy. i mentioned we used to have a 22 day best of italy tour,people don't have 22 days mostly so we broke it up, we got the 17 day best ofitaly, and then we have a south italy tour in 13 days, and, sicily. i don'twrite anything about sicily, but i've made a

tv show on sicily, and you can look atany of our tv shows anytime you like at ricksteves.com. we have 16 tv shows, eight hours of coverage on italy, that you can view for free any time, simply bygoing to the tv corner in our website. to learn more about our tour program,obviously you can go to ricksteves.com. now, the guidebook that covers italyoriginated as the handbook for italy tours, and i realized people wanted to do thetours without me, so i decided to put everything i knew about doing the tour,into the guidebook. and today, this rick steves italy book is the best-sellingguidebook in the united states to any destination outside of disneyland. ican't compete with disneyland, i'm sorry.

but, i'm very proud of this book, it'sbeen a labor of love for twenty years, updating it every year, and this givesyou all the practical details, so you can do our tour without us. that's rick steves italy, sotravel with that for all of that details. i spend four months a year in europe, and muchof that time is in italy, visiting all these places in person, taking carefulnotes. i just love to develop a personal relationship with my friends who runhotels and restaurants in italy. and, i think i've got more friends in italythan any other country, there's something about italy where you just connect withthe people, and it's a lot of fun. this is

nico, he runs one of my favorite hotels invenice, and i just love dropping by and and reconnecting. so, in our program, we'vegot plenty of information if you're planning a trip to italy, we've got ofcourse the italy guidebook, we've got guidebooks for each of the cities, venice,florence, and rome, and the florence guidebook includes a lot of tuscany. we've got aphrasebook, so you can connect with the people, and, you know, italy, more than anywhereelse, i find local people want to connect with you, and they're so excited to hearyou try the language, and with that phrasebook it provides a way to connect.we've got 16 tv shows in two dvd sets, and we've got a map. so, lots of information to helpyou out. i should also mention that we

have an app, absolutely free, rick steves audio europe. and my passionis to take the tours that i gave over 25 years, i just loved taking groups throughvenice, florence, and rome, and then i put those tours into the guidebook, but ijust think it's tiresome to read, and look up, and read, and look up, so what idecided to do, was take those included tours from the guidebook, and really beautifully produce an audiofile. and offered for free on the app store, so now you can have the tour in yourear, and just be lost in the wonder of the pantheon, or st. peter's basilica, or thesistine chapel, or the uffizi gallery.

these work really well, and again, they'reabsolutely free, and before you go to italy, if you like my style, if you wishyou had a private guide, download that app, and use the tours to pompeii, rome,florence, and venice, it's rick steves audio europe and, oh, one person's used it, thank you. no, when i go to the pantheon itsreally fun for me, 'cause there's a good portion of the people in there that-theyhave me in their ear, i can tell 'cause i know just what they're looking at, and i dothe same thing. it's been a lot of fun to make our tv shows over the years, and asi said, we got 16 shows, there's plenty of information. i wanna just very quicklyreview for you, the top, most important,

itinerary in italy. you would fly intomilan, and from there you would go to varenna, which is the freshwater cinque terre, really. it's on lake como, a wonderful place to get over jet lag. fromverona, you could hit milan if you wanted to, the most important, big, no-nonsense, city, and then you would head over to the dolomites, the dolomites. those arethe mountains, the alps of italy, then down to venice. in venice, from thereyou'd cut right across to the italian riviera, the cinque terre, scoot fromthere, visiting pisa on the way, to florence, then you go into tuscany andumbria, with a stop at the two most important cities in those regions, sienaand assisi, then you'll go into the

countryside of umbria and visit orvieto, andnear orvieto is my favorite hill town, civita di bagnoregio. from there, ifyou're doing the full blown italy, you'd bypass rome, go down to naples andsorrento. make sorrento your home base, because it's more comfortable for mostof us, and side-trip into naples, which is a rough-and-tumble urban jungle, and youwould from sorrento, also visit pompeii, and the amalfi coast, then you wouldreturn to rome, finish your trip with the finale in rome, and fly home from there.that would be a beautiful, complete, italy, and if you've got a month for italy onyour own, that's how i would spend it. it's very important to recognize thatitaly is the most rewarding country, in

my estimate, in europe, but it's also themost challenging country in europe. you need to take the preparation timeseriously, so when you get to italy, you can enjoy it on its terms, becausethere's only one way you can experience italy well, and that is on its terms, okay. thank you very much. "buongiorno," i'm rick steves, thank you for tuning in, thank you for joining us, i'm tellin' ya'italy is my favorite country. it's about two-thirds the size of california,sixty million people, and we can think of it in terms of regions. and, oftenoverlooked, are the charms of northern

italy. in the north of italy, we've gotbeautiful riviera ports, we've got romantic lakes, we've got the mostimportant big city to see, in the sense of today's energy of italy, thatwould be milano, and we've got the mountains, the alps of italy, the dolomites. we'll start with the cinque terre, because a lot of people aredreaming of the italian riviera when dream about italy. i love the cinque terre. i think, if there's any place that i had an impact on, more than other placesin my travel writing, is the cinque terre. i discovered that back when i was acollege kid, and i just have done my very best to ruin it. i mean, there are so manytourists there now, and when i discovered

it, there was no economy there, it was verypoor, it was probably one of the poorest parts of italy, and since then, it hasdeveloped, it has welcomed the tourists, and i was joking about me, i thinkeverybody is getting on board, and people are recognizing the charm of theselittle villages. and today, you've got five incredible little towns, allwithin easy walking distance of each other. just an hour or two away from bigplaces like genoa, the leaning tower of pisa, and florence. when you go to the cinque terre, there's five towns. that's what it means, cinque terre, the five lands, and monterosso al mare is the town that is the best resort town of the region. that'swhere you'll find the most hotels, the nicest

beaches, and so on, and when we go tomonterosso al mare, you've got that rent- an-umbrella kind of ambiance on the beach,and the only really good beach on the cinque terre. and i'll remind, you in theevening, that's when the crowds go home, and that's where the charm comes out.the cinque terre used to be the classic "back door." there's nothing reallyback door about it now, it is mobbed with visitors in the middle of the day.they're not only the tourists like you and me, there the cruisers that come in,and there are the people side dripping in from the big city, genoa. genoa'shuge city, and there's a lot of people there, they just want to scoot over tothe beaches for a little fun.

consequently, during the day, the towns arejust inundated, but at night, everybody's away. there's not enoughcomfortable hotels in these areas to keep mass tourism happy, so people do notspend the night. it's all yours at night, that's the good news. my favorite town isvernazza, and vernazza is the most exotic town, it's the most romantic town, it'sthe most kind of dramatic town, vernazza, and you get beautiful views coming infrom either direction, is what i would try to stay at, but it's hard to get aroom there, you need to book in advance, and you pay a little extra money i think,to stay in vernazza. but look at vernazza, it's perfectly preserved, nobody has anymodern buildings there, it hasn't changed

a bit, it's a national park, the whole area is anational park. this is frustrating if you're a local landowner, 'cause you can't meetthe demand by upgrading your funky little "pensione" into a fancy hotel, andcharge more money. there are no comfortable hotels in this town, becausenobody can build a comfortable hotel, and that's really good news because it keepsaway the most obnoxious slice of the traveling public; people who insist ongood hotels. they're all in portofino, nearby, or porto venere, complaining aboutthe prices and the traffic jams. what i like about the cinque terren part is, itis fiat-free italy. there's sixty million

people in italy, and just as many fiat, and i find my favorite places are places that are, essentially, traffic-free.it's hard to get a car to these little chunks of the riviera coast. i've seen alot of the riviera, this is my favorite little bit of the mediterranean coast, anywhere. vernazza. at night, all the restaurants are busy, and anybody who's spending thenight in the region is enjoying some beautiful fresh seafood. that people areproud of their cooking, there's a lot of local traditions there, pesto and trofie.trofie is a special kind of pasta made for the pesto, this beautiful basil sauce,and is it is harvested right there,

and it is famous for that region. it'scalled liguria. and of course, the seafood is a big deal in the cinque terre. you get some beautiful seafood, some beautiful pasta, and some delightful memories whenyou're eating in the romantic evening hours, with a good perch with a view ofthe sea. when you are in cinque terre, vernazza is a beautiful place tocall home. now you can walk from town, to town, to town, here you can see the kindof coastline, and you can imagine what the trails are like. the only town of thefive that's not on the water is cornelia, and to get to cornelia, you gotta walk upfrom the water, and there's switchbacks from the train station, it's part of the cinque terre trail, and after cornelia,

you'll come to a town called manarola. and manarola is a secondary town, it's got a lot of charm, but it doesn't have the exoticbeauty of vernazza. still, it's a great stop. this is a view of manarolafrom the boat out at sea. and the big town of the cinque terra isriomaggiore. and, riomaggiore is a nice place that would be a little lesstouristy than vernazza, and still have the magic of the cinque terre. here we haveanother view of riomaggiore. now the trains lace together each of thesetowns, and the trains didn't come in until about a century ago after theunification of italy. so that's one reason they're so remote, and so exotic,and distant feeling, is the

modern world was not able to get thereuntil the last century. in fact, the towns originated as groups of peoplekind of hiding out from marauding pirates. people chose the most ruggedpart of the italian coast line, and each of these towns has castle where they wouldhave a look out, and they would holler if the pirates were coming. today, of course,the trains are tunneling through, and the trains are in the tunnels, and then theyjust blink open for each of the dazzling, colorful parts, and then you're back in the darkness, and it'sthe way you connect the towns. every hour there is a train, and about everyhour in the summer, when the weather is

good and it's not too windy, there's a boat.and the boats go from town to town, and they always feel like they're injecting economyinto the town's when they take their little bows there, and all the peopleempty into the town, and they scurry around, do their shopping, and then getback onto the boat and go to the next stop. it's easy to get from town to town,but in the cinque terre, a departure in the hand is worth two around the corner.so if you've got a train leaving right now, if you've got a boat leaving rightnow, and you gotta get somewhere, it's best to get on that because you neverknow when the trains are gonna just stop running, or the boats are gonna incur toomuch wind to be able to stop the in

little ports. the cruise industry isreally causing a problem in the cinque terre. in the last few years, livorno, which is the cruise port forflorence, has realized-the cruise ships have realized-that a real attraction fortheir cruisers, for people who've already been to florence, is to send them over to the cinque terre. consequently, busloads of people, and i'm talking thousands, arecoming in at the same time, making the trails at the cinque terre almostimpassable. if you are on a cruise ship, i think it's-i don't think it's right toadd to this scary problem of physically too many human beings in the cinque terre. but that, coupled with normal

weekend crowds, and normal summer crowds,and all of this, it's making midday, on certain times when you get a perfectstorm of cruise ships, almost unlivable for the cinque terre. remember, in theearly morning, in the evening, it's relatively empty. in the middle of theday it can be absolutely ridiculous, so take advantage of those beautifulquieter hours when you're on the cinque terre, and enjoy the trails. the trailsare a beautiful way to just get a dose of that kind of riviera wonder. a lot oftimes, when using the trail, you'll come around the corner and see just the viewof a lifetime, and photographers just gobble it up. it's easy to hike from townto town, it just feels good, and when you

get into town, the food, which is alreadydelicious, tastes even better. now, when you're planning a trip tothe cinque terre, for a lot of travelers, there's a lot of stress relating totrail closures. and you'll hear people say, no, the trails are closed, there is aflood, there was a landslide, there's no more trails, well i've been going to the cinque terre for 30 years and i've never been there when the trails aren't closed, youknow, there's always a trail here and there that's closed. basically, most of thetrail closures are to cover their legal exposure. they have to say, "it's closed,proceed at your own risk," and then people step over the little barrier and make thewalk. if one trail is absolutely closed,

and that does happen, and probably rightnow there's one or two trails that just are impassable physically, there's stilla handful of other trails that are wide open. so don't worry about trail closuresin advance, go there regardless, you will have trails.and ask locally, not to the tourist board because they're going to tell you theparty line, ask somebody who's not in the tourist board, "really, what trails areopen and where can i hike?" and then make your plans from there. you'll find themain kind of accommodations in the cinque terre is private accommodations. theolder people have moved to the big city, and they've hired east europeans to livethere, in a little corner of their

apartment, and rent out the rest of theapartment to travelers. and it's quite handy, it's quite reasonably priced, andyou're right there in that little town wonder. there are pebbly beaches in mostof the cinque terre towns, if you want a serious beach, you gotta go to resort tonearby, but frankly i wouldn't go to italy for great beaches. i would go toitaly for great coastal culture and so on, but leave the great beaches to theitalians. they thrive on crowds, and traffic jam, and noise, they actually likethat, and for us it's just stressful, we don't speak the language, we don't reallyknow the ropes. i would stay away from the famous beach resorts in italy, and iwould focus on the rustic charm of the

italian riviera and the cinque terre.in the north of italy are a bunch of lakes. it's almost like the peninsula ofitaly is welded to the alps right around these lakes, there's lago di garda, lakemaggiore, and also lake como. my favorite of the lakes, without any doubt,is lake como, and that's what i stress. lago di como. this is called "honeymoon country" initaly, "luna di miele," honeymoon country. and my favorite stop in lago di como is varenna. and varenna, not to be confused with vernazza in the cinque terre, varenna is like the vernazza of the lakes in the north of italy.the neat thing about varenna is it's a one

hour train ride from milano. you can fly into milano, catch the train one hour north, and not deal with the big city, and getover jet lag in varenna. if i'm ever just fried, and that happens to me when i'mworking sometimes, i need a place to convalesce, this is it, varenna. it is sobeautiful. get a little hotel right on thewaterfront. you get a pass and you can use the ferries all over the lake. you'llfind all sorts of people just having anniversaries, or having honeymoons, orhaving romantic getaways. there's something really romantic about varennaon lago di como. the lake is full of traditional steamers, and these steamerswill connect the towns. bellagio, you may

have heard of bellagio. this is theactual bellagio, right here, and it is the resort of the region. it's bigger thanvarenna, this is where well-dressed people with their little poodles go forvacation, and it's fun to drop by, although i would hang out in varenna.an hour to the south is milano, and if you're going to see one big city, one nononsense powerful city in italy, i'd make it milano. they say for every church inrome, there's a bank in milano, and milano is where you feel the energy of italy.recently, italy surpassed england in per capita income, and italy is making moremoney per capita than in england, not because of san gimignano, siena, and thecinque terre, i can promise you that. it's

because of the no nonsense, powerful,industrial cities of the north. torino, genoa, milano, and so on. milano is the city for me. to feel thereality of italy, you owe it to yourself to have one day, or a couple of days in agreat, no nonsense city. it's a great place to fly into, it's a greatplace for sightseeing, you've got this incredible "duomo." when you hear the word "duomo" in italy, thatmeans cathedral, the "duomo." and this would be the duomo of milano. milano, is like so manyitalian cities, going traffic-free. look at this beautiful bike street here, andpedestrian street. just a few years ago

it was full of cars, and now it is all forthe people. this is the main square, the piazza del duomo, looking at thecathedral, and when i'm here i'm always thinking about the risorgimento. remember,in 1850, there was no italy, and there was no germany. there was just a bunch oflittle countries that spoke those languages, that dreamed of one day beingunited. the established countries in europe wanted nothing to do with that,and it took some pretty impressive political finagling for the greatgeorge washingtons and thomas jeffersons of modern italy to get that countrytogether. i would highly recommend learning about the risorgimento beforeyou go to italy, because when you go to

italy everywhere you look it's, cavor that, mazzini this, and garibaldi that. those are all the heroes of the 1860s when italy was defying the big powers of europe, and becoming united. andthe hotbed of that risorgimento spirit was milano, and when you go to milano it'severywhere. i mean, this is the victor emmanuel gallery, a big gallery named after thefirst king of italy. and there there was energy in italy after 1870when italy united, they're building trains, and lacing together the country, they're building awonderful, state-of-the-art, futuristic, you know, industrial age malls, and theyjust were embracing this whole idea of italy.

the fathers of italy famously said, "we'vecreated italy, now we need to create italians," alright, because there was that,what they call "campanilismo." in italy, "campanilismo" is loyalty to yourown bell tower, the "campanile." right here in my town in edmonds, right outside myoffice, there's a cute little bell tower and it rings a bell, and i've got alittle bit of that "campanilismo" right here. can you imagine, a hundred loyalties like thatall around italy, and suddenly you've got a unified political entity with sixtymillion people, or whatever, and now that challenge is to teach these people, "you're italian."

so, it's a wonderful story, and it's just150 years old, and it's worth checking out. across the streetfrom that victor emmanuel gallery, you've got the la scala opera house, the greatestopera house in a lot of ways in europe, and when you go there, and you stepinside you, go to the museum, you get a look at the opera hall, you learn aboutverdi. verdi, the great opera composer, what's his name, v-e-r-d-i. it was apolitical slogan. victor emmanuel, "re d'italia," victor emmanuel, the first king ofitaly. people would stand on their chairs in the opera, and they'd sing the arias,knowing they were waving the italian flag, which was forbidden, because austria and france wouldn't allow it, but

they all work together in thesewonderful, wonderful, trouble-causing, patriotic ways, to somehow bring italy tounity. to learn about that is really exciting, and you can do that when you goto milano. we got-a lot of people are interested in leonardo da vinci'slast supper. i'll warn you, you need a reservation. ever sent the appearance ofthe davinci code, there have been long lines to get in to see leonardo's lastsupper, and you need to book it a month in advance. so get your guidebook out,get online, and make a reservation, and it's very straightforward. but ifyou go to milano, and you don't have a reservation for the last supper, it'sgoing to be very complicated, and very

expensive for you to actually get achance to see it. it's one of the great masterpieces of european art. it'sinteresting to note that leonardo chose to finish his career, the meat of hiscareer, in milano. it was a very important city that rivaled florence, andoftentimes, under-appreciated. beautiful districts to go out to eat in milano,there's a place in the canal, kind of port district, called the naviglio grande, whichis where i like to go for a characteristic meal, and that would allbe discussed in the rick steves italy guidebook. now when you go to italy, ifyou want the complete story of italy, part of that is the alps. we think ofalps being france, and switzerland, and

austria, but the dolomites, or thedolomites, are the italian alps, and they really are quite impressive. now i wantto remind you, this part of italy was austrian, until wwi. austria startedand lost wwi, they lost their international holdings, becomesa relatively insignificant little landlocked country, and its port on the mediterranean,trieste, and all that area around there, became part of italy. when you go to dolomite area now, you'll find signs in both languages, because it's just been 100 years that people have been part of italy, and they still speak german.here we see the two names of the

regions, "sudtirol," if you happen to befrom vienna, and "alto adige," if you're from rome, okay. the south tyrol or the upperadige river valley. and below that, you see "hello, welcome" in three differentlanguages. "welcome" in german, "welcome" in italian, and "welcome" in the ancient latinlanguage that this little demographic enclave still has as a part of theirlanguage heritage. there's a tiny little group of people that still speak thislanguage that was related directly to the ancient latin. when we look aroundthe dolomites, i explored this whole area when i was writing the firstedition of my rick steves italy guidebook, looking for a good town tocall home in the dolomites, and most

of the town's just felt like a skiresort in the summer, just drained out, and empty, and "what am i doing here at thewrong season." but there's one place that is-- well there's a major town called bolzano, and that would be in the valley floor, and bolzano feels a lot like salzburg butin italy, it's got beautiful arcades and a wonderful alpine kind of heritage, and aquirky museum with the iceman, otzi, who thawed out of a glacier. and itgives us like a quirky, miraculous look at somebody who lived in prehistorictimes. quite amazing to see otzi the iceman when you're in bolzano. and myfavorite hometown is just up on top of the ridge above bolzano, and this town iscalled kastelruth. now you'll see here it's

got two names, kastelruth and castelrotto. i happened to say the german word first, but if you're italian, you'd say castelrotto. what's confusing, is if you have a map, it might say either/or. bolzano would be bozen, kastelruth, castelrotto, there's a town nearby, vipiteno or sterzing, you don't know, depending on german or italian. castelruth is a charming town with a beautiful old district, chairlifts going right out from there into the mountains for lovely hikes, andalways some cultural activities happening. from there, you take a shuttlebus into a national park called the alpe di siusi. the alpe di siusi is the biggesthigh meadow in the alps, anywhere in the

alps. and you've got this lovely highmeadow on a sunny day, on a warm day, it's such delightful hike. you can do it in awheelchair, i mean, it's just perfectly flat, it's like pasture land. or you canhike up and get onto the schlern, the mountain there. it's just like going tothe beach except up in the mountains. there's petting zoos, there's loungechairs, it is just a delightful chance for anybody to enjoy the alps of italy.so when you're thinking about italy, remember, there are a lot of greatattractions high up in the north. thank you. hi, i'm rick steves andi want to share with you my take on one of thegreatest cities you can visit anywhere

in europe, and that is venice, and whenyou think about venice you also have to think about the veneto, that is theregion around venice, which has some beautiful towns. so we're gonna look atvenice, we're gonna take a side trip to padova, verona, and then a little bit outof the veneto, towards the south, but an obvious side trip from venice, and thatis called ravenna. thanks for joining us, and we'll startwith venice. now venice is the best preserved big city in europe. it is justbeautifully preserved in the middle of its lagoon in northern italy, and it's a townthat goes way, way back. remember, venice started out as a refugee camp,really. after the fall of rome,

peace-loving people on the mainland wereoverrun by all the barbarians going back and forth, having their little villagesburned and trampled. finally, they got together and said, "this is going to bemiserable but let's move out in the lagoon, and hope the barbarians don'tlike water." so they abandoned their farms, they literally deforested that part ofitaly, to pound tree trunks into the mud to support their little town, andthey made a village, a fishing village instead of a farming village, out in thelagoon, and gradually that morphed into a trading center, and they were greattraders, and when they reach their pinnacle, they had a trading empire thatstretched all the way to the holy land,

and they were the economic powerhouse ineurope. it was-their dollar was the dollar. and when you go today, you'll findthat the venice of a thousand years ago survives remarkably well. it was able tocontrol a lot, not because only was a great trader but it was also quite animpressive military power. venice had the first really mass-produced militarysort of complex called the arsenal. and at the arsenal, and you can see it todaywhen you walk out there, it's a10 minute walk from the main square, you'll findthe place where they could mass-produce their warships. in a very early form ofmass production with an assembly line, they could put together an entirewarship in a couple of days, and

outfit it in one more day. the story is,whenever venice had an adversary, a potential military adversary,they'd invite him down, and they'd say, "let's go to the arsenal and we'll show you how we make our ships." and they would build the ship in, like, two days, and thosepotential adversaries would go home and say, "let's just not mess with venice". i mean itis such a powerhouse. when you look at venice today it's the shape of a fish,and it's perfectly preserved. there's a law that prohibits anybody from changingany of these buildings, i believe there's a couple of modern buildings in the town,the only one you're likely to see is the train station. when you look at that fish-shaped island, you can see, if it is a fish,

the great intestine would be the grandcanal, right. and up until a century ago it was an island, but then it wasconnected with the causeway. the causeway goes to the mainland and it brings thehighway and several train lines, so you've got venice now connected with therest of italy, and the rest of europe. you got a big train station, and you got abig parking lot right there near the mouth of that fish. from there you get onyour boat, and you wind through the great intestine and you dump out at piazzasan marco. that's where the doge's palace would be, and that's where basilica sanmarco is. the trick for us is to break out of that middle zone between thetrain station and piazza san marco, and

explore to the far reaches, and that'swhere you find the magic venice without all the crowds. here you see a schematicdiagram of the city with the different neighborhoods and i'll remind you, yougot the train station. it takes about an hour to walk from the train stationacross town to st. mark's, where the political and religious center is. it's adelightful walk, halfway between is the rialto bridge. and between the rialtobridge and st. mark's, that is the main shopping thoroughfare. and most of thetourists spend most of their time just in a shopping trance, walking back and forth with all theother tourists, with all the fancy

displays, just marveling at the crowds and the high prices. it doesn't occur to them to get out and walk to the tail of the fish,or walk to far reaches of that beautiful island. this is where the grandcanal dumps out, and this is the end of the grand canal, looking right from thetop of the bell tower. this is where you arrive, in venice this is the trainstation, and that's the building from mussolini's time, that's a fascistarchitecture. in front of the train station you'll find the boat dock. that'scalled a vaporetto. you get around venice by boat. they don't have city busesbecause there's no cars or buses. and what you do is think of the boat, thevaporetto as a floating city bus. it has

numbers, it has stops, and the onlydifference is, if you get off between stops you can drown. you hop on the boat, and youwind your way down the grand canal, under the rialto bridge, all the way to st.mark's square. and this is it, just a parade of beautiful palaces, and mansions,and merchant's villas. i've worked for thirty years to take groups aroundvenice, i love tour guiding in venice, and we've created an app that has guidedwalks through the very most important stops in italy and the rest of europe. it'srick steves audio europe, it's absolutely free, and i want to really stress it here,because when you go to venice, you're gonna want a guide. and you can hire a guide,it's quite expensive, you can read a book,

or if you have a mobile device, simplydownload rick steves audio europe, and you go to "tick tick tick," whatever you want to pick,on your computer, you can listen to it on your mobile device, you can listento it offline. stick me in your ear, get on that slow boat on the train station,and i narrate every little way-all the way across town to the doge's palace.it's a lot of fun, and it works really, really good. the main square, st. mark'ssquare, it's the only place that gets to be called a square in the town. it'sfacing the basilica san marco and the bell tower, the "campanile." this is oneof the greatest pieces of real estate in europe. this is a romantic painting froma couple centuries ago, but if you stood

in the same spot and looked at it today, it hasn't changed very much. and it's gotthe same kind of romance, there's something about it that i never gettired of. when you're in venice you want to get caught up in the romantic of venice,you want to be on that square in the evening when the dueling orchestras areplaying. you hear people complain about "oh it's $25 for a glass of wine or a beerat the famous cafã© on the st. mark's square." well no, its not $25 for a beer,it's $25 for a table at the most expensive piece of real estate in europe, listeningto live orchestra, surrounded by the wonders of venice, and it comes with a drink.come on, don't complain. if you want a

beer, go four blocks away and step up tothe bar and get a beer for the same price as anywhere else, you know, but thisis one of the great experiences of europe. here you are, looking at basilicasan marco, wow. now i want to remind you, venice started out, as i mentioned, as arefugee camp. it was really important, ultimately, politically and religiously, or politically and economically, but of no great important religiously becausethey didn't go back to biblical times, it was a relative upstart town, and they hadno bones. you had to have relics to be important in those days, and venice hadall sorts of money, all sorts of power, but an inferiority complex when it came toreligious importance. now i don't know

exactly how they knew the stuff but ithink there was, like, newsletters going around or, something but the bones of st.mark were available in egypt. st. mark's bones. venice sent a crew down toegypt to, what they call, "rescue the bones of st. mark," from the muslims, you know, andthey brought it back to christendom. and they planted mark under thealtar of st. mark's basilica, and suddenly, st. peter and the dragon are out, and st. mark and winged lion are in, and venice is now on the pilgrimage trail, and it's acomplete town. here we have a thousand year old mosaic telling the story under the door of st. mark's basilica, and if you look closely, you can see markon that great day, being brought in after

that voyage across the mediterraneanfrom egypt, and finding his ultimate resting spot there in venice, under thealtar of st. mark's basilica. and it is a gilded, lavish rich, thousand year old treasure chesttoday. well worth checking out, you gotta checkout the interior of venice, st. mark's. and all over venice, in fact, all over venice's empire, you will find lions with wings, 'cause that was the symbol of st.mark, st. mark's winged lion. this is the political and religious center of veniceright here, you can see the doge's palace, that was, you know, the politicalpowerhouse, the capitol building, and

you've got the bell tower which you canstill climb to this day, and behind that you've got st. mark's basilica. when welook at it today, it's the same thing. venice is remarkably well preserved. nowthis doge's palace is worth touring, and when you go inside you'll findlavish rooms, and you'll find all sorts of history, and when you go out back you'vegot the bridge of sighs which you can walk over in order to get to the oldprison, just like casanova did. and all those other people who, according tolegend, would be sentenced in the doge's palace, take one last look at theirbeautiful, beloved venice, sigh, and then rot in those prison cells with all therats and everything, on the other side of

the canal. venice has so many gorgeouscorners, and it's so fun for us to check it out, but i wanna remind you, it's human naturefor all of us tourists to stay right where all the people, and the glitter, andthe glass, and the trinkets, and the glasses, okay. break away from that. breakaway from that, because venice is much more than tacky tourist shops, venice isa chance to get out and explore a town of 70,000 people. venice is a smalltown today, that entertains 10 or 12 million people a year. but the core townis a parallel existence. the local people know their venice, and they've got kindof blinders, and they can almost live oblivious to the crush of tourists thatcome and go every day. if you're up early,

if you're out late, if you're in the farfringes of that island community, you do feel the pulse of the community ofvenice. one great thing about venice is, wonderful art. if you think about artin europe, remember you gotta have money to have art. in southern italy, there was not a lotof money, and there's not a lot of art today. the money was in venice, the moneywas in florence, and that's where your art is five hundred years later. i like artin situ, rather than in museums. in situ, where was originally commissioned to be,and venice has one of the greatest examples of in situ art, and that is thechurch of the frari, the church of the

brothers. this is the exterior, not a veryimpressive exterior, but if you step inside, you got masterpieces by giorgione,by titian, and by a handful of other great masters of the venetian renaissance. tosee one great painting in situ by a great master, to me, is just a delight. togo to a church where you have eight paintings, by eight different masters, allwhere they're originally intended to be, is flat-out amazing. i like it so much thatone of the actual tours on the rick steves audio europe list is of the frari, justso i could walk you through that and appreciate that. if you like venetian art, remember there is a gallery, it's sort of like the uffizi, or like the vatican,and in venice it's called the accademia.

and there you've got a, just a whole lotof very sumptuous venetian art. the renaissance started in florence. it wasbrought down to rome by the pope. in 1521 when raphael died, the renaissance carries onin venice, funded by the rich merchant class. in venice it became the art ofwealthy people. and it was art that made wealthy people feel good about theirwealth. you can imagine, if somebody's filthy rich, they want to have an artist that makes them feel cultured, and high-class, not crass and materialistic,and i think you get that kind of agenda in the art of venice. a key for me, as atour guide, when i have a group in venice, is to get my people walking. now, a lot ofamericans are nervous about getting lost

in venice. don't worry about getting lostin venice, you're gonna get lost in venice, alright, there's almost nostreet names, you don't know where the heck- what street you're on or anything like that. wander to your heart's content, andremind yourself, "i'm on an island and i cant get off without knowing it," okay.you're on the island of venice, it's not that big, and you just can't get irrevocably lost. one very nice trick is,any business, any little hotel, any restaurant, and they are everywhere, has acard, and on the back of that card is a map that says, "you are here." anywhere yougo in venice, they love to give up

their cards, you know that. pick that up, andthat's where you are and they want to help you get to that restaurant, but it'salso gonna help you get the heck out of that restaurant, and it shows you wherethe big landmarks are nearby, so you got that sort of, "i am here" aid. also remember, when you're walkingaround, and i used to do this to my groups, i'd walk all over, my groups would think we'rehopelessly lost, and i would actually know where we are, because i would justlook above the crowds. if you look above the crowds, you see signs pointing to thenearest landmark. you navigate by landmarks. in this case, you can get tost. mark's by going left or right. i love

to wander to the edge of venice. look atthis, there's no tourist in sight, it's just a pastel wonderland, and this is all yoursany day of the year, even in the most crowded day of the year, you could cometo this spot and see no tourists. beautiful, pastel, sleepy, dreamy,romantic venice. if you can get a guided tour of venice it's a great idea. on theships, on the boat, on the back lanes, there's lots of good guides in venice, there's goodbooks, and of course we cover that in our app. this is the bridge of sighs, and togo under the bridge of sighs in a gondola with your favorite travel partner is abeautiful thing. remember, when you go to venice, you can get a gondola ride. nowit's kind of a tourist trap these

days, it costs about $100 for 45 minutesin a gondola. you can divide the cost and the romance by up to six people. sixpeople in a gondola, okay, it's not quite as romantic as you and your partner butit's very inexpensive, and it's a beautiful, beautiful moment. i think yougotta budget it. it's a beautiful, beautiful thing, and we do with our groups, i liketo do when i'm there. i will tell you, you're stuck on a boat with a gondolier, and somegondoliers are just ruffians, and others are charmers. they're all hustling foryour business. talk to a bunch of them, it's fun, they're all trying to sell theirservices. find one who you like,

that you feel good about, and then hire him,he can take you around. nothing's quite like a beautiful evening on a gondola with agood travel partner. now if you don't have enough money to get a gondola, youcan go on a traghetto. these are gondolas that are public ferry gondolas, thatgo across the grand canal where there's no bridge. the grand canal's a long canal, andit's only got, i think, four bridges the whole way, so what you want to do is lookon the map, and any good map will show you where the traghettos are. this justcosts a couple bucks and then, you kind of stand, like george washington crossingthe delaware, and you feel very local when you're crossing the canal with abunch of locals going to the market on a

traghetto. enjoy the vaporetti. the vaporettos are these city bus boats.i like to sit in the front of the boat and just joyride. it's a beautifulexperience, and you can get around, and you can go to the far reaches of thelagoon. now, when you're exploring the lagoon, remember, you've got a bunch offamous islands in this venetian lagoon. murano is famous for glass, venice hadthis wonderful glass tradition. you can go to murano and see all the glass works, andthey welcome the tourists, and they give you a show, and the show is alwaysfollowed by a hard sales pitch. i find the sales pitch almost comedic. i enjoyedthe sales pitch as much as the glass

blowing job show, but remember they're all intoselling glass, not making you happy. and i would remind you also, if you have limited time,to remember that every one of the major glassblowing works on the island ofmurano has a branch right on the main square, next to st. mark's basilica, andyou can save yourself a lot of messing around by just following a tour groupinto one of those places. they don't care, it's always free, they don't wanna give a glassblowingdemonstration to a single person, but if you can tail along with the group, sitdown, enjoy, they'll make you a vase, or a glass horse, or something like that, andyou get the sales pitch. it's right there

on the main square, and it's a lot of fun. farther out in the lagoon you find aplace called burano, and burano is famous not for glass, but for lace.beautiful lace on burano, and for me it's just a pastel wonderland,it's a great place for poets, and photographers to wander around justmarvel at the beauty of the village and of the lagoon. venice was born,actually, in torcello. the oldest part of venice is a place that, today, is prettymuch depopulated. malaria swept through and killed everybody, and today there'sjust the oldest church in venice still standing. but torcello is an evocative place tocheck out. when you look at the lagoon

around torcello, there you see the kindof mucky terrain that is where the first venetians pounded those stumpsin to support their first little houses. i like to have a romantic canal-sidedinner, but you can imagine any restaurant that has beautiful canal-sideseating is gonna be touristy. the fact is, any restaurant in venice is touristy. youcan't survive as a restaurant in venice without being touristy, and that's just agiven. its not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just the way it is. some of them are a good value, others are arip off, so i spent a lot of time and a lot of energy

scouring venice for good restaurants, icover them in my guidebook, and there are some beautiful places where you can eatin venice. my favorite place to eat in venice is a mobile feast, visiting abunch of little bars, eating ugly things on toothpicks, and washing them down withlocal wine. that's called "cicchetti." cicchetti is a local tradition, like spain has tapas,venice has cicchetti. now i like this photograph because it gets me allexcited. the suns going down, all the cruisers are back on their ship, all thetourist groups are back home, and it's just me, and venetians. and i'm out andabout, and i'm going to bars. i'm going to colorful bars, where all the localruffians are hanging out, and i'm eating

those beautiful ugly things on toothpicks, andi'm learning a lot about the cuisine, and not spending a lot of money, and i'mmaking lifetime memories. when you get high tide, and a wind, and a certainbarometric pressure, all in a perfect storm, what you get is a flooded venice.the lowest part of venice is st. mark's square where we all hang out anyways, andthat's the first place to flood. you can be sitting in those famous cafes,with the orchestra, and suddenly-wait a minute-there's water here. and then you put your feet upon the next chair, and the water gets higher and higher, and the orchestra keeps playing. it's just a lot of fun to be invenice when the flood happens. the floods

are happening more, and more it's notunusual to see a flood. the downside of the flood is, during the day they setup these elevated walkways, and everybody has to walk on these elevatedsidewalks, and that makes it even more congested than normal, and you can't getanywhere, it just stops everything, it makes it very slow going, unless yourlocal with hip boots and then you pull those on you can slosh right across the square withoutbothering, but it's very interesting time. and if you do get a food, i would highlyrecommend you get out and have some fun in it, because it's beautiful to be outduring a flood, especially at night. i have so many friends that run hotelsin venice, and their families have

been running these hotels forgenerations, and it's just a beautiful dimension of the city. when i get tovenice, i get an old, old hotel, and i take off my shoes, and i stand barefooton the "pavimento veneziano." that's the ancient kinda linoleum thatis designed with a bunch of marble chips and everything, so it can flex. as thisbuilding settles, the floor won't crack, it'll just flex, and you see the waves inthe floor as that city continues to settle. but for me it's a very tactile welcometo venice, to stand barefoot on the "pavimento veneziano." now, venice is so great, thatalmost nobody thinks about padua. padova, padua, english and italian ways tosay the same town. padova is just

about a half an hour away from venice,and if there was no venice, padua would be a major stop, but almost nobody goesthere because of the greatness of venice. again, right next to venice, it's a townwith beautiful arcades, beautiful cobbled lanes, a wonderful time warp atmosphere, agreat market, and lots of pilgrims, because pilgrims go to padova to seethe basilica of st. anthony. st. anthony is a beloved saint, and when you gothere you'll find a lot of pilgrim action, and i would recommend going tothe basilica of st. anthony and kind of respect and follow the whole route of thepilgrims, because they're gonna stop at a number of places inside and use theserelics to help them worship. padova's

also famous because it has a venerableuniversity. it's got one of the oldest and greatest universities in europe, and what's fun about theuniversity in padova is, people don't all graduate on the same weekend in thespring or early summer. they're graduating all year long in a steadytrickle. whenever you do your dissertation and meet with the professoryou can graduate, and then you find people, it's a great day for the family,everybody is dressed up, grandma and grandpa are there, you're wearing your laurel wreath, and you're all fine and everything. and then once you've graduated, you dress down, yourfriends hijack you, you all get drunk, and

they have this kind of roast in public.and it's a very rude, and crude, and kind of silly, and alcoholic sort of event,and people are gathering around, and you are now a doctor, you know. and yourfriends are reminding you, you may be a doctor, but you're just still one of us, you know, you're just still a normal person. and they sing this very catchy song i just can'tstop singing it when i'm in padova, i forget the italian words but in english it's, "you're a doctor, you're adoctor, but you're still just an asshole, you're a doctor, you're a doctor, but you'restill just an asshole." and then there's a ruder part that i won't sing. but to be there, and to celebrate with thosekids in the street, and see all that

craziness, and of that wonderfulreminder that you may have letters before your name now, but keep your feeton the ground, it's a beautiful thing, and it's been going on for centuries. you'll get that when you go to padova.another highlight of padova is the scrovegni chapel. and i just love thehigh middle ages, gothic and giotto. and the greatest giotto art is this chapel.completely frescoed, by a whole series of wonderful scenes from thebible by giotto. this is a very precious and fragile masterpiece, and whatthey do in a precious and fragile scene like this is, they only let a few peoplein at a time, and they actually have to

dehumidify in a special box first. soyou sit, and you dehumidify, and they open the door, and you can go in andenjoy it, and then you're out of there. and you only have so much time to seethat, but it's well worth the trouble. we filmed it, you can see it on ourtv show, but don't miss the scrovegni chapel when you're there in padova,because giotto was the greatest painter of the gothic age. about an hour away isverona. and verona is famous among most travelers and tourists because of romeoand juliet, which was a gimmick, a complete goofy thing dreamed up by a tourguide just in the last century, and it's quite effective because it brings a lotof tourist town. but verona is worth a

stop for far more important reasons. it's roman city, it was the great roman city before crossing the alps, and you'll findthis is a roman bridge two thousand years old. when you go to florence[verona] you'llfind romeo and juliet's balcony which is just completely fictitious. it's fun tobe there because you've got a whole flood of tourists coming and going, but whatyou'll also find is, you'll find an amazing roman arena, and a wonderful "get out inthe streets and stroll" kind of ambiance in verona. two hours south of venice, youget to a town called ravenna. ravenna is a charming town, it's got a beautiful,bike-friendly sort of atmosphere, it's the most bike-friendly town i've been to initaly, but it is famous for its mosaics.

ravenna is important because it was awestern outpost of the byzantine empire. rome, you know, was inthe city of rome, and then around 200 or 300 ad rome fell in the west, but the emperormoved to the east, and he took the roman empire basically to constantinople,present day istanbul, named constantinople after emperor constantine, and it becamethe eastern roman empire, which survived the west by centuries, and eventuallymorphed into byzantine empire. during the byzantine time, it was the pinnacle ofcivilization. for centuries, europeans in the depth of the dark ages, back when theywere just running in the mud, looked to constantinople for civilization, andspiritual and cultural leadership. it was

stability, it was the pinnacle of westerncivilization. and the western outpost of the byzantine empire was ravenna. and inravenna it you've got sumptuous byzantine mosaics. now if you're really aconnoisseur of mosaics, you should go to ravenna because they are the best, but ifyou take all the time it takes to go from venice to ravenna to see themosaics, and dedicate it into appreciating the beautiful mosaics already in venice,that frankly is a more practical use of your time. there are wonderful mosaics invenice that under-appreciated, or there are the best mosaics in ravenna. theseare in churches that are five hundred years old.

these are churches that really areancient roman, as much as medieval. this is the cusp. in this church you cansee mosaics of jesus, who's the beardless good shepherd, and that'sthe ancient roman portrayal of jesus, no beard, and you can see jesus with theclassic beard that we think of that he has, which is the medieval portrayal.right here, it's the cusp of the middle ages and the ancient world. when youthink of north italy, you gotta think of milano, the best of the no-nonsense,powerhouse economies in italy, urban center. you gotta think of the beautifullakes, and the best lake is lake como. you can think of the best stretch of the mediterranean coastline, in

my estimate, the cinque terre. you can also think of the dolomites, that is the mountain resorts, and what we've just been talking about now,probably the highlight of that part of italy, venice, and the side trips fromvenice: padova, verona and ravenna. "grazie." thank you for joining us.i'm gonna talk about florence and florence is really theart capital of europe. florence of course is famous as the hostof the renaissance; the epicenter of that cultural explosion that happened about600 years ago bringing europe out of the middle ages and into themodern age. and it happened in florence

for good reason. florence was the mosturban part of europe, florence had a banking business going on, florence hadlots of trade happening, florence was the most literate and educated part ofeurope, and florence was sitting on the rubble of ancient rome. they werepainfully aware that they were in a middle time and it was greater in theancient times and when they get their act together florence can kindle that renaissance,or the rebirth, of the greatness of ancient rome. also, in florence you've gotthis amazing situation where you got all these geniuses all going to almost like thesame high school.

imagine, florence the class of 1500. when yougo to florence, because of all that, you've got a lot of great sightseeing.florence is built on the arno river. you got the main part of the city and yougot the wrong side of the tracks, or the oltrarno, the wrong side of the river.and i do want to remind you in the united states we think of the wrong sideof the tracks but that's 'cause trains brought in the business and the wholeeconomic vitality. in europe the equivalent of the trains was towns thatwere born not in the age of rail but in the age... the middle ages, when the safeand logical and efficient way to get your goods to town was on a river. sotowns grew upon rivers, rivers provided the

power of the day and on the other sideof the river would be where the rough-and-tumble community would be --outside of the controlled and safe trade area where you could have minorities andjews and and people that didn't fit in withthe mainstream, and that morphed overtime to be the creative zone and in florenceyou've got the oltrarno, in rome you've got trastevere, in paris you'vegot the latin quarter, in sevilla you've got triana. all over europe you'll findthat river in the wrong side of the tracks. don't miss oltrarno whenyou're in florence. when you look at these towns, it's important to rememberthat in the middle ages they were

contained within a wall. today it can beway too sprawling and overwhelming but in your mind, take some scissors and cutaround and just focus on what's within that fortification -- 'cause that's whereninety percent of your sightseeing is -- and then it becomes very accessible onfoot. here you got your wall, going out from the river on the otherside of the wall would be oltrarno, and then within the wall would be thecore of the city, and in the center of that you would have a great cathedral.in modern times when the city's expanded beyond the protection of their wall andwhen you have centralized nation states where you've got stability and youdon't have people, you know,

threatening your town, the walls werejust a waste of important space, they were ingrown, you had a lot of trafficcongestion. what do you do? tear down the wall and you got yourself a circularboulevard. when you look at the map in florence today you can see a circularboulevard going out from the wall that used-- going out from the river that used tobe the wall, and then the old gates that would herald, you know, the exit of thecity in the direction of this or that town, those gates today decorate littletraffic circles and small parks that would decorate the circular road thatgoes around the city. that helps you get your brain around a city, it becomes lessoverwhelming and easier to tackle.

so, here we see a schematic of florence andyou can arrive at the train station the upper left hand corner, and within abouta 15 minute walk you can get yourself down to the cathedral, called the duomoin italian, and then right down the main drag in the city to the piazza dellasignoria, that would be the city hall square, the main square which faces theriver. everything here is within, twenty thirty minute walk of each other, and thecity is delightful on foot, and, recently the city government has made the center of town verycar unfriendly, meaning very pedestrian friendly. consequently, we cannot get ourtour buses to our hotel anymore. i love

it. we have to park at the edge of theold town, and walk in with our bags. that's a beautiful thing. now, when youwalk down the streets in florence, you have to dodge bicycles and you can hearbirds tweeting. in the old days, you were crushed against a big stone wall and atiny sidewalk, with trucks and traffic ruling the city. a huge change and a greatimprovement for that wonderful city. the core of florence is the duomo, and theduomo is--it is the inspiration of the architectural renaissance. whenmichelangelo built his dome in rome, he said, "i can build a dome bigger, but not morebeautiful than the dome in my home town of florence," the dome designed bybrunelleschi, again, that kicked off the

architectural renaissance back in the15th century. now you can go to the top of that dome, you can go inside of thatchurch, or you can climb to the bell tower next to the dome. this shot is takenfrom the bell tower, you can see in the top of that dome, a bunch of tourists. it'squite a tight squeeze to get to the top of the dome, you can certainly do it, butit is claustrophobic, and i find it's just overwhelming with crowds. it'slong line to get up, and invariably there's some crude, big italian in a t-shirtthat just loves to rub on people as they squeeze by him, alright, so halfway up youdon't have any choice. if you want not the romance and excitement of climbingthe dome, but just a practical climb, go

to the bell tower instead of the dome.either offer a great view. looking down from the bell tower, you see thebaptistery is a free-standing structure, outside of the cathedral. i'll remind you thatin the middle ages, you could not go into the cathedral until you were baptized, soyou had to have the baptistery outside. baptisteries are very important and historic buildings intowns like this, and in this baptistery you've got the famous gates of paradise,the wonderful gates designed by ghiberti that inspired so much of the renaissance.remember, when we're looking at these kind of art masterpieces, these wereopportunities for local artists to really contribute to their city. there wasa lot of local pride.

florence was competing with all ofits neighboring city states, and here they would say, "we got to have new gates on ourbaptistery, let's have a competition, and the greatest artists of our generationwill design these, and it'll be the glory of our of the city," you know. and we have now,artists that are combining math and science in order to give you abelievable three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional surface. radical break.now they really want to show realism instead of simple 2d symbolism like inthe middle ages; and florence, in a lot of ways, was the birthplace of that, andthat's where we find the renaissance. of course, the most famous piece from theflorentine renaissance would be

michelangelo's david. and when you'relooking into the eyes of david, you're really looking into the eyes of renaissanceman. now, when we look into the eyes of david, we see this is a civilized,thinking, faithful, individual, sizing up the bully, the giant, the darkness of themiddle ages, the crudeness of the neighboring cities states. and he's goingto overcome that challenge with his sling. if you look at david, the hand ofdavid is too big and too developed, intentional by michelangelo. this is thehand of god. it wasn't the boy that slayed the giant, it was the boy with hisfaith in god that was able to overcome his adversary, and that was symbolic offlorence rising above its crude bully

neighboring city states as well, and aptmascot for the city. understand the context of the art: why itwas, made who made it, what was going on, what was the agenda, and your art comesto life. this is the kind of stuff we love to teach in our tours, this issort of the joy of being a tour guide. after 25 years of leading groups aroundeurope, i've learned what people need to know, and what they don't need to know,and i've written a book called europe 101 which a is fun and practical sweep throughthe story of europe, from the pyramids to picasso, designed for your sightseeing in mind. this was written for smart people who were sleeping in theirhistory and art classes, before they knew

they were going to europe. now you got atrip coming up, and you wish you remembered what came, gothic or romanesque. just a little background on that, and you can step into a gothic cathedral, excitedly nudge your partner,and say, "isn't this a marvelous improvement over romanesque?" imagine,being excited about romanesque. you can do it with a littleinformation. you don't need to be a scholar, you don't need to be asophisticate, you just need to be curious, and able to read a book. that'swhat i'm so excited about this, for the value of your travels, in fact, i have madea five hour series of lectures which is the same topic of this book, it'savailable right on our website at ricksteves.com

in the travel talksection. you can go there, and it's a little lengthy, but it is an art historyfor travelers course that takes you from the middle ages right up until the lastcentury. also i want to remind you, the app. rick steves audio europe is fullof guided tours that cover everything you need in italy, really, venice,florence, rome, and pompeii. really heavy on florence, because florence is so full ofgreat art. when you think of the piazza, that so italian symbol of community, thepiazza goes all the way back to ancient roman times, it is unique in a lot ofways to italy. italy embraces that whole piazza hub of the community idea. and in florence you've got a wonderful piazza della

signoria right on the main square, infront of the city hall, and when you're there, you're looking up at the fortifiedcity hall, and next to that, just to the right, is the uffizi gallery. the uffizi gallery, that two tone building in the background there. "uffizi"is literally "the offices." this was the offices of the medici, who ruled fromthat big city hall. there's a sky bridge that connects, you know, the medici's office with the offices of the city. today, the uffizi is the--it hosts the greatest collection of italian paintings anywhere. this is themust-see museum in florence for italian art. here's the courtyard of theuffizi gallery in the evening, and

that's the courtyard in the day. it's areminder you should be out at night enjoying florence, without the insanity.every two-bit tourist wants to go to the uffizi, and every two-bittourist wants to see david. you're in there with the whole world, and it's notdesigned for those kinds of crowds, and it's overwhelming. you gotta do it. find a way to minimize the stress, and thecrowds, and the time-wasting, it's worth it. there are ways to get around that, butthis is the line for the uffizi gallery. it's there every day, it goes all the way around theblock, and the typical tourist just

stumbles in, goes to the end of the line, andspend two hours trying to get through the door. you can get around that line. it'svery straightforward. in my guidebook, i've got a guidebook on florence that gives you all the details,just make a reservation and you walk right by all those people, don't sayanything too smart-aleck, and you go straight to the door, you show em' yourappointment, and they let you in. you've enjoyed the uffizi gallery and they'reout of there, before these poor people who have one day in their life inflorence and spend a third of it waiting to get in, before they get to thedoor. please, make a reservation for david. make a reservation for the uffizi,and then you can enjoy the great

botticellis, and you can be surroundedby all those beautiful michelangelo prisoners, and so on. and with a little background, you canunderstand what was going on in those heady days. back when it was verytentative, you wanted to celebrate the body, but at first, you had to do the bodyin biblical terms. on the left is the virgin mary, and on the right is venus,and when they were bold enough to have the body that was quite something, andthen when they were bold enough to have the body away from a biblicalcontext that was something else, and then after that, they were bold enough to havea male nude standing in a rich person's

courtyard. just fancy, beautiful, stuff forsome rich guy, with no apologies necessary. humanism the triumph of therenaissance, and you see that the whole evolution when you travel in florence. bargello is to statues what the uffizi is the paintings. you really got to balance that. if there's two museums to see, you gottago to the uffizi, and, many less crowds, go to the bargello where you see some incrediblestatues. the most under-rated museum in florence is the museum of the duomo, andthat is the museum of the cathedral. it's directly behind the cathedral, it's gotincredible statues, and no crowds for some quirky reason, including an amazing michelangelopieta. michelangelo did three or four

pietas, you can see most of his work inrome, florence, and milan, and in florence you can see, of course, david, and theprisoners, but you also want to see his pieta at the museum of the duomo. florence has all sorts ofhistoric churches. inside the church's, you've got a great chance to see gothic--or not gothic, renaissance architecture, beautiful symmetry,beautiful mathematically correct rhythmic architectural lines, and in thechurches, you can track the evolution of great art from medieval pointed arches,gold leaf backgrounds, lots of halos, until you get to the renaissance, whereyou have mathematical perspective,

balance, symmetry, and that realism thatwe celebrate from the fifteenth century onward. when you're in florence it's great shopping town, and leather is the big deal. there's plenty ofopportunities to do some leather shopping there. the big news for eating inflorence, i think, is the mercato centrale. the old industrial age iron andsteel-- or iron and glass market was getting run down, and kinda depressed like they wereall over europe, and all over europe what i've seen is a revitalization of thesegreat industrial age marketplaces, by turning them into food courts. and this isreally a foodie's paradise. when you're in florence, go to the mercato centrale for lunch, it's a great idea.

i mentioned florence is becoming much morepedestrian-friendly. streets that used to be just completely the domain of trucks,and buses, and cars, are now motor bikes, bicycles, and pedestrians. the pontevecchio is the old bridge, literally. it goes across the arno river and, in goodmedieval style, it's lined with shops. so you've got all these beautiful shops, andthey are the jeweler's shops today, and you can go across that night and enjoysome beautiful music. i find the evening in florence to be very charming andromantic. the city government has done a great job of controlling the quality andthe placement of the buskers, so you've got concert quality musicians out in thestreets at night, and i love to spend the

evening just with a good travel partnerand some gelato, enjoying the street music. when you cross the arno river, crossingthe ponte vecchio, within five minutes you are in that oltrarno district.remember i was talking about the earthy, crusty, alternative to the main centerwhere all the power and the money was? the oltrarno is where you go today fortrendy little foodie restaurants, artisans doing their thing, and colorfullittle back lanes and beautiful squares. oltrarno. be sure to factor that intoyour florentine travels. florence, boy, florence is a small town, with a great history, andthe more you prepare for florence, and it deserves the preparation because of allthe crowds, the more you'll enjoy it.

"buongiorno,"thank you for joining me, i'm rick steves, and i want to share with you a little bit about the countryside of italy, specificallytuscany and umbria. when you go to italy, you often think of venice, and florence, androme, and understandably so, but you need to balance that, and complement that with alook at the countryside. and of course there's lots of great countryside to seein italy, but your, sort of, quintessential italian countryside, iwould bet, is tuscany and umbria. now a beautiful thing about tuscany and umbria, isit's very handy, it's between florence and rome, it's easy to get to, and, whenyou get to tuscany and umbria, you've

got a nice balance of sizable towns, witha great pride, from the middle ages, and you've also got charming villages, andbeautiful farm culture, and a wine culture. the most important city intuscany and umbria is siena. and siena is a rival of florence. actuallyflorence is in tuscany, so i should say the most important city in tuscany wouldbe florence, but that would be a major big-city experience. when you're thinking oftuscany, i'd rather make siena my home base and my springboard. and siena is onehour away from florence, it's easy to get to by bus or train. and when you go tosiena, it is a perfectly preserved medieval town, almost traffic free. and iwant to remind you, back in the middle

ages, it really was neck-and-neck withflorence, they were are arch-rivals. and to this day, they are rivals on the futballfield and, so on. it's just-- there's a lot of medieval, pettiness is not quite theword, but medieval attitude in siena. and when you go siena it's fun to getcaught up in that, 'cause it survives to this day. they've got a great duomo, orcathedral, and if you step inside the duomo it's just slathered in art. andremember, when you think about the art of siena, it hangs onto its middle aged style a lot longer--for about a centurylonger than florence. florence abandons the halos, and the gold leaf, and thepointed arches, whereas siena kept

embracing that. so this would be your sieneseart, long after florence was well beyond that in the renaissance. you've got agreat couple of galleries in siena, and wonderful church museums to enjoy thatkind of at. the greatest square, arguably in all of italy, is the campo in siena. andwhen you go to the campo, you don't find a church with a spire on the mainsquare, you find a city hall with a bell tower. because siena, to me, is an emblemof humanism. siena celebrates good government, all the way back to the timeswhen it was a proud city state with, what it considered, an excellent communitygovernment. and you see that when you go inside the city hall to this day. you canclimb to the top of that tower, and it has a

commanding view of the town that’s spreadout from there. now when you go to the campo, the main square, a lot of timesit's just a beautiful, like, a big brick beach. and you can hang out there, andenjoy the sun and whatever, and then you can come back later on and, bam, it is packedwith people. this is the palio. twice a year, they have an amazingno-holds-barred, literally, horse race, and it's called the palio, and it just takesthe city by storm. if your gonna go to siena during the palio, you really need tohave reservations in advance, 'cause you can imagine it's quite crowded. but anytime of year you can go and enjoy the drama, and just the magnificence of thatsquare. and again, any time a year you can be

there, just sitting cross legged on thebricks, and come back later in the day and it'll be like this, depending on whatsort of festivities going on. the palio is just two days out of the year, buteach palio has a whole series of days before and after, where you can enjoy allsorts of festivities, as you have the competing neighborhoods, the contrada,that all have their own horse, and their own racers, and their own pride. it's justa lot of fun to get caught up in that. nearby is pisa, and pisa is famous forit square of miracles, the leaning tower, theduomo, and the baptistery, but i want to stress that pisa was a great andimportant city state

in it's day that competed with siena, and itcompeted with florence, and it competed with genoa, it had its own fleet. and when yougo to pisa today, you'll find the whole town is worth exploring. i love pisa, away from the leaningtower. very few people pause long enough to enjoy that part of the town. it's easyto get to by train, and within a couple of blocks ofthe train station you find the river, the arno river, the same one that goes throughflorence, and then beyond that, you will find the piazza of miracles. and thepiazza of miracles is named that, 'cause it's one of the most dramatic piazzas anywherein italy. you've got this ensemble.

remember in the middle ages, you had tohave this ensemble, that was the standard center of a city. the church, the belltower, and the baptistery, and you'll find that little trio all over the place. the difference about pisa was they had alousy soils engineer when they built their bell tower, because before it waseven done it was already tilting. in fact, if you look at it from the right angle,you can actually see they they straightened it up, so it tilts and then itgoes straight at the very top, not a very good answer to the problem. they've goneto great lengths to solid it up, and pump out the water, and pump in concrete or whatever,and today they have stopped the tilt of

that leaning tower. so we were allworried it was gonna get to this point and fall over, but thank goodness itnever did. and today you can go to the top of that tower. you can imagine there's alot of tourists that want to do that, so when you go to pisa you need tomake a reservation. and upon arrival you go straight to the box office, get your name on the list, and then youget a time so you can enter the bell tower, and that gives you a chance to seethe other sites on that square. your guide book will give you details. butfrom the top of the tower, which is really fun to climb up by the way, youget the chance to survey the piazza of

miracles from above. the duomo, thecathedral, is a remarkable building, and artistically it's the mostimportant stop on the square. because inside you've got a beautiful baptist--abeautiful pulpit, and beautiful carvings by pisano, the great sculptor that inspiredmichelangelo from pisa. nearby, just half an hour away by city bus, is lucca.and in researching my guide book chapter on lucca last time around, i realized thatthere is a direct bus connection from downtown luca overto the leaning tower. and you could very reasonably consider the leaning towerof pisa, a sightseeing attraction of lucca attached by this regular city bus thatyou could get to in about half an hour.

so consider that, because lucca is a muchmore popular place to make a home base and call home. lucca has beautiful downtown center withall sorts of characteristic buildings, and i find just a charming downtownwithout famous sites, but with a beautiful intact kind of ambiance thati really like. most unique about lucca is it has a more modern wall. in the olddays, you had tall walls that were kinda thin, before they were cannon. with theadvent of gunpowder, and cannons, and artillery, you need to have squat, fatwall. of course, squat, fat walls is what we saw in the 1800's, in the 1900's. and today, a squat, fat wall is

just as worthless as that tall, skinny,wall, except, a squat, fat, wall gives you a nice park all around the town, on top.and this is a beautiful strolling opportunity, and it's a very popular biketrip. so you rent a bicycle and then your bike around the modern wall oflucca. it's a delight, one of the highlights of your visit tothat town. there are a lot of hill towns in tuscany and umbria, and my favoritehill town, i gotta say, if i had to choose one, would be volterra. and volterra is just,it's less crowded, and it's less famous, and that's one of the reasons i like it somuch, its kinda dark and brooding, and it has a lot of history that can be sharedby local guides. one thing i try to do in my

book is employ local guides, by arrangingwith them to offer public tours to my readers. in volterra, annie who--and herpartner who run this little tiny tour company, will meet my readers every nightat six o'clock, and for $20, my readers get a local friend to take them aroundthe town for a couple of hours. it's a beautiful thing. it's beautiful for annie,'cause she makes couple hundred dollars on a good night, and it's great for my tourists because for 20 bucks they get the luxury of having an expert licensed guide toshow them around this great town. tuscany, the word means etruscan, etruscan.this was the etruscan civilization five

hundred years before christ. and todayyou'll find great etruscan museums around tuscany, one of the very best isin volterra. here we have the lid of a sarcophagus. the etruscans, we don'tknow much about them, except for what we've learned from excavating their tombs.they had beautiful art on-- decorating their sarcophagi, and we canlearn a lot about their civilization just from looking at that. also in thesetowns, you'll find great artisans. this is an alabaster workshop, and you can stepright in and watch the men working, and buy some alabaster. you can findsilversmiths and enjoy their art, all over tuscany and umbria you've got this chanceto connect. whether they're vintners or

silversmiths or alabaster carvers,whatever, you can find that love of tradition and workmanship whenyou are in tuscany and umbria. of course, tuscany and umbria are famous for their wine,and as you travel around you'll find lots of vineyards that welcome tourists. whenyou're going wine sightseeing in tuscany, and, you know, the famous brunello dimontalcino, and so on, there's all sorts of elegant, and rich, andwelcoming vintners, but you have to have a reservation, it's just really important.it's very easy, they'll get off their tractor and show you around, butthey just don't want to be surprised. so in my guidebook i've visited many ofthem, i've listed my favorites, it's very

simple, you simply call em' up a day or twoin advance and say, "can i come by" and they might pair you up with somebodyelse who's visiting or whatever, but it behooves you to take a little time to doyour research. and then you meet a vintner, he takes on a walk through the vines, hetakes you into his cellar, he lets you taste the finished product, and it's anelegant look at the culture of tuscany. now there are a lot of ways to fill itup for cheap when you're in tuscany. and the italians like their fancy wine, butthey also like their filling stations. this is right outside of orvieto,where local people bring their jugs and top up their table wine for the season. i liketo spend a lot of money for a glass of

wine when i'm in tuscany, in fact i like to try thedifferent wines. and rather than buy a whole bottle, i would spend a little moreof--just for samples, and be able to understand the best that they can do. myfavorite kind of restaurant is an enoteca, in this area. not a fancyrestaurant, but an enoteca, that serves-- that opens up fine bottles of wine andserves them by the glass, and matches them with beautiful local produce. that'sreally the goal, is to pair it well. i'm not sophisticated enough to understandall this pairing, but i am sophisticated enough to recognize it when i taste it.and when you hit the jackpot, it really

is out of this world. strive for that in your travels, openyourself up to letting somebody, who really appreciate the fine wine and thelocal terroir, to put it together so you can have that great tuscan experience.all over tuscany, you can you can visit these great vineyards. your towns for homebases for this might be montalcino or montepulciano, two great towns. i wasjust there this last year researching in the guidebook, and they're right up todate in the rick steves italy book and in the florence and tuscany book, whichcovers that area little more thoroughly. montepulciano, like montalcino andlike a lot of other towns in this area, have

a mini square that reminds you of atwo-bit sienna, or a two-bit florence, because in a way they were, they werecontrolled by those mini empires centuries ago. montalcino is in brunello country, youmay know that brunello di montalcino. from the window of my hotel you get thisbeautiful, beautiful view of the countryside, and that's what you explore.beautiful churches, beautiful cypress trees, wonderful abbeys, and of course,villages, and vintners. if you want to get the full dose of that salt-of-the-earthtuscan magic, stay in bed and breakfast. the key is agriturismo. in europe, they'restruggling to keep their small farms

viable, and what they do is they rent outrooms to make ends meet. in italy a working farm gets the privilege ofcalling itself an agriturismo. you can't call yourself an agriturismo unlessactually making money as a working farm. so it's a way to helpsubsidize them, because it's really important, the bed and breakfast income that they enjoy. i've done a lotof research, it takes a lot of time to scour the countryside for these differentagriturismo, and i'll tell you when you find a good agriturismo, like isabel'splace here, it is it is just an amazing vacation. in the case of this bed andbreakfast you stay for a week, and every

day's a cultural experience as she takesyou truffle hunting, and then you make your pasta, and then you go to wineries,and every day is a delight. and when i research these places, and see thetourists enjoying the swimming pool, enjoying the fine food, enjoying the richculture, wow, i just think, "that's a great vacation in the countryside of tuscany."and when i drop in on these farms, i find people, all of them have my book but noneof them knew each other before their visit, and it's one big happy familyenjoying this delightful italian cultural boot camp. san gimignano is a beloved town,because of its skyline. look at san gimignano, it's pretty cool to have that skyline.and that was not unusual

five hundred years ago. in the middleages, every town had its feuding noble families, each with their private armies.the montagues and capulets, you know, that from romeo and juliet. noble familiesfighting each other. clintons, romneys, gingrichs, you knowall of that, bam, bam, bam. and when you got central power, the kings gonna come inand say, "alright nobles, i'm tired of this, you guys aren't powerful, i'm powerful,y'all gotta cut off your towers." and you look at any town, and you find lopped offtowers. the one town that has its original skyline intact for whatever quirkyreason, san gimignano. it's a gorgeous place, but it is quite touristy. i findthe charm of san gimignano is easiest to

enjoy after hours ago. go there in theevening, have dinner there, and spend the evening, but stay in the countryside nearby. during the middle of the day, san gimignano is a tourist trap. after dark, it has all that magic. orvieto is a goodexample of a hill town. look at the way it feels this volcanicoutcropping, can you steal the cliffs on both sides? isn't this delightful? it's justbig enough for a sizable town, and you don't need to build a stupid wall, you got onealready don't you, the cliffs. so you carve into the cliff an entryway, and youfortify the entryway and you've got yourself a perfect pinnacle town. in fact,this is so well fortified that this was

the pope's refuge when he was underattack. he would head out to orvieto. today it's about an hour and a halfnorth of rome, and it really is a great place to check out. its centerpiece isthis amazing cathedral, you step inside the cathedral, it's got beautiful art. and this isa whole chapel painted by a guy named signorelli, one of the most beautifulchapels in italy. and, like hill towns elsewhere, you've got a nice connection from thetrain which is in the valley floor, 'cause obviously the train's not gonna go upinto the hill town. when the train arrives there's a bus waiting right across fromthe curb, and everybody gets off the

train, and onto that bus. and then up intothe town. what you need to do when you come into a hill town anywhere in italy,is to remember, this train is not for tourists, its for commuters they liveup in the town. everyday they come home from the bigcity, they get off the train, and they don't want to hang around, they get offthe train, and step onto that bus, and it shuttles them right up to the city square. if youdilly-dally in the train station, there's good chance you're gonna miss yourconnection and have to wait for the next train or a bus to take it to the center, do you follow me there, or you'll have to spend a lot of money for a taxi. so takeadvantage of the shuttle's when it comes

to hill towns. one hill town that has noshuttle is civita de bagnoregio, and civita di bagnoregio is my classichill town. i just love this place, i've been going here ever since i was a collegekid. we take our groups here, and it is just the, sort of, of a textbook example ofa hill town. you find a lot of these hill towns in tuscany and umbria. this istechnically just over the border in the state of lazio, but it's near orvieto,which is in umbria, so you think of it in terms of orvieto. and when we goup that donkey path, we are leaving the 21st century. and to wander through thistown is just an amazing thing, the main square. unfortunately, it's a dead

town now, the last residents have died,and it is people from the big city moving in and having countryside escapes,and making their bruschetta, and selling it to tourists. so it doesn't havethe living culture that it's had a generation ago, but you still have thatcharming, that rustic lifestyle in the countryside of italy. nearby is assisi. andassisi is famous for this guy, st. francis st. francis, the amazing founder of thefranciscan order, and when he died they made this incredible basilica forhis bones, as relics, and he was made a saint within a couple of years of hisdeath. very, very fast, unprecedented inroman catholic sort of terms, and for

centuries, tourists and pilgrimshave come to assisi to honor st. francis. when you look at the architecture onthis church, you can see it was meant to accommodate hordes of pilgrims. in themiddle ages it wasn't tourists, it was pilgrims that put this place on the map. the main drag from the town down to thebasilica was the pilgrims way, and there'd be all sorts of hostels along the way, andlittle rustic restaurants, and so on, and to this day, it accommodates travelers ina beautiful way. i love assisi, it's got the beautiful franciscan heritage,and it's also got a chance for you just to hike up to the ruined castle, enjoy thesame bird song that inspired st. francis

so many centuries ago, have a picnic, and celebrate thisbeautiful, beautiful, sort of special atmosphere in assisi, whereits famous for a gathering, interfaith gatherings, they go to assisi becauseit's got this beautiful "love thy neighbor" kind of vibe. and even if you'rejust a flash-in-the-pan frances fan, zipping through on your tour it's abeautiful opportunity, take a moment to read up on st. francis, take a littlewalk, and tried to get into the spirit of st. francis. down in the valley floor, youcan find the little fixer upper church that he and his partners renovated, andthat's where the franciscan order was

founded. and down there you can see thatchurch today, in the middle, underneath a huge dome of a giant church,where all the pilgrims go and remember st. francis. when you're going to italy,you're gonna go to the big cities. venice, florence, and rome, and so on. make time for the countryside, and themost popular countryside destinations in italy, understandably so, are in umbriaand tuscany. thank you very much. "buongiorno," are you ready to go to rome?rome is brutal. rome crushes ill-equipped andill-prepared tourists, but if you know how to enjoy rome, it is themost magnificent city. rome, along with

paris, and london, and istanbul, is one offour cities in europe that really merits a one-week visit. and when you go to rome,you're gonna enjoy the father of our civilization, basically. it has got somuch history. you need to see it in layers, you need to be prepared, you gotta anticipate the crowds, and the heat. let's talk about how we're gonna enjoy rome. now,when you're thinking about italy, there are three great cities, venice, florence, rome,this is our most popular itinerary. i would highly recommend considering open-jawsin italy, and doing rome as the finale. rome is where you gotta warm upto it things aren't anti climactic afterrome, and i would fly home from rome, that

would make a lot of sense to me. rome goes all the way back. it was, ofcourse, a thousand years the center of the ancient world in the west,from a western point of view. to put the story of rome into a nice easy kind ofspectrum, you've got the birth of rome, five hundred years before christ. it lastsfor a thousand years until 580, it grows for 500 years, it peaks for 200 years,that's the pax romana, and then it falls for 300 years. there's a little more to thestory than that, but that’s rome in a very tight nutshell. the first five hundredyears was the republic, then it got so big they needed an emperor who could rule itwith an iron fist, and that was the

empire period from the time of christ onuntil it fell. you'll find this symbol of rome, romulus and remus being suckled by theshe-wolf, all over town. you'll also find the great emperors being honored.everywhere you go in rome you'll find history. it's hard to imagine the citytwo thousand years ago with a million people in it, and that was ancient rome,classical rome. when romo was at its peak, the word "rome" meant the civilized worlditself, much more than just the city. here's the roman empire at its peak, fromthe time of christ for 200 years. and notice how rome is absolutely the center ofthat realm. notice how the lake was called "our lake,""mare nostrum." andnotice that all of that green was the

civilized world, people who spoke latinor greek, and everything beyond that was the barbarian world, not quite human, "bar,bar, bar." 'course it started to fall later on, but really when you think about theancient world, this is really what you're thinking about. now when you talk aboutrome itself, it's on the tiber river, originally inhabited where the etruscancivilization to the north met the greek civilization to the south. southern italy was a greek colonycalled magna graecia. it was as far up the river she could go by boat, and the firstplace you could cross with a bridge. rome. and when we look at the tiber we can seethe different neighborhoods of rome, and

it's remarkably walkable when you'redowntown in the center. you need to think of rome inneighborhoods, you can connect things very quick and easy by taxi. you can goacross the river when you want to see trastevere and the vatican, but most of it is in that medieval and ancient core. of course, the ancient site of romeare really what most of us have in mind. you got the coliseum, built two thousand yearsago to house 50,000 people with numbered seats, they could fill it and empty it asquickly and efficiently as we do our great stadiums. i want to remind you,there's huge crowds and you're going where everybody wants to go. there's four or fivesights that everybody want to see in this

city that everybody wants to see, and ifyou're going to those four or five sites you better have a reservation or a pass thatlets you pass the lines. there are plenty of ways to get aroundthe lines, but without taking advantage of that in advance you're gonna be at theend of this line really getting a sunburn and wasting a lot of precioustime. once you get inside you need history, youneed guiding, you need information to help you bring--resurrect that rubble,otherwise it's hard to appreciate what it's all about. but with the help of agood guide, it does sense. i just love the challenge, as a guide, to sit mytourist down in the rubble of ancient

rome and bring it to life. and that'swhat our guides do, anywhere in europe we love to bring the story to life. we'vegot some very good guides in rome; it's a city that deserves guides, and it's a city thathas a lot of wonderful licensed guides. and there's a lot of tour companies thatwill let you do not have to hire a private guide, but book onto a tour andhave a local licensed guide show you around, and that would make a lot ofsense. we've also got my rick steves audio europe that has very important guidedtours to the great sights of ancient rome and the great sights of the vatican. this app will be agodsend for you if you don't have the

luxury of your own private guide. takeadvantage of that if you want to have that service. when you're thinking of theroman forum, this is the common ground between the seven hills of ancient rome. that's where the magic of rome happened, and then, right from the start five hundred years before christ, war wasthe business of state, rome starts expanding, and bigger, and bigger, andbigger, and this becomes the hub--the capital of a vast empire, and this wasthe main drag of the capital of that empire, the via sacra. and today whenyou sight-see, you walk down this via sacra and you tried to resurrect all thatrubble, and understand what it was like

so long ago when they had theirtriumphal parade going down this under the triumphal arches, and so on, and itjust--it covers with goosebumps when you can get a guide that can help you bringit to life. lots of propaganda, art back then was art to make the people followthe emperor, to fall in line. when you're looking at rome it's hard to grasp theimmensity of their buildings, and the power of the empire. i mean look at this;and then you realize if you get an artist reconstruction of it those are just the side niches, and yousee the little broken nub on the top, that would be the part of an arch that wentall the way across,

and this was as big as a vacant--an emptyfootball field today, but it was all just veneered with fine marble, and all sortsof elegant people in togas, and fountains and so on. it is hard to imagine the magnificenceof rome at it's zenith. and to this day, there are ancient doors that are stillswinging on their original hinges from two thousand years. now the capitol hillis the hill that overlooks the roman forum. and on the capitol hill you've gottwo of the most important museums in rome, the capitoline museums. and you canstep into those museums, and it's easy to be overwhelmed by the outdoormagnificence of rome but remember the

beautiful, beautiful statues, and there'slots of that, are taken out of the acidic and put inside so you can enjoy it there. make a point to save time and energy forthose interior sites, and the capitoline museum is one where you will find a lotof the textbook examples of roman art, right there. not very crowded, very easyto enjoy, and a lot of antiquities. a short walk away is the pantheon. and thepantheon is the building that gives you a feeling and an appreciation for themagnificence, and the splendor of rome at it's zenith better than any other building.when you step inside of the pantheon, you realize how beautifully preserved it is. and you gotta recognizeit's the one building that wasn't really

cannibalized because it went, almostdirectly, from being a temple to all the gods, "pantheon," to a church dedicated to the martyrs of rome, orthe people who were killed during rome for their christian faith. and when youstep into the pantheon and you look up at this incredible dome, and you thinkof the technology they had way back then in the year 200, how on earth didthey build this thing. exactly as wide as it is tall, 140 feet. itwas the biggest in europe for 1400 years they poured the concrete so it got moreporous, and less heavy as it got to the top where it didn't need to be so strong, and thenyou got this beautiful, beautiful

skylight in the center. this is free, it'sright there in the center of rome, you can pop in anytime you like. this is thevictor emmanuel monument here, and it's a big, overbuilt, kindamonstrosity built to the ego of the king just 110 years ago orsomething like that, but i like the victor emmanuel monument because itgives you a feeling for the pomposity and grandiosity of rome, and if you put athousand of those buildings together, in my mind, that would be what ancient romewas like. the cool thing about the victor emmanuel monument--the bad thing is it'ssitting on a bunch of antiquities and they can't get it because this big buildingsthere--the great thing about it is you

can go to the top of that building ifyou know about the elevator on the back side, and you can enjoy a beautiful viewfrom up there. it's a cool view because you can look down on the forum, you gotthe best 360 degree look at the city, and you don't have to look at the buildingyou're standing on. imagine this view from the top of the victor emmanuel monument, i love it, i really love it. one of my favorite buildings in all ofeurope is the galleria borghese because of what's inside of it, the greateststatues by the wonderful bernini. bernini was the father of the baroque movement. nowyou have to get a reservation to get in to the galleria borghese. they only letin a couple hundred people every hour or

something like that, but it's easy to geta reservation. you go inside and you've got apollo chasing daphne, and you've gota handful of other amazing masterpieces by bernini and by canova. i want toremind you, if you know where to go in rome, florence, and milan, you can seealmost all of michelangelo's great works of art. and when you're in rome, you've got achance to see moses in the church st. peter in chains. and this is animportant, just tactical, you know, advice about your sightseeing in rome. it's a big,grueling city. you spend a lot of time in traffic, and a lot of money on taxis, youmight as well see things neighborhood at a time. and if you're going to go to thecoliseum, which you're gonna do, you

should know that a five minute walk awayfrom the coliseum is the st. peter in chains church, which has a michelangelo'sstatue of moses. it's free, it's not crowded, and it's open an hour before thecoliseum. if you're stretching your day, here's an example of being a smart tourguide; get an early start, go enjoy st. peter in chains and michelangelo'smoses at the crack of the day, the beginning of the day, and then have acup coffee, walk down, and be the first person into the coliseum. you can do thatif you plan smartly, and that's important. also in rome, like any city, you've gotall sorts of quirky sights you might not know about if you didn't do yourstudying. a lot of people are fascinated

by human bones. if you like human bones,you got em' in rome, man, you got em' in rome. now you don't go out to thecatacombs to see human bones, no bones in the catacombs, fascinating sights, but nobones. if you want bones, you go to the capuchin crypt. the capuchin monks had an interestinghabit of hanging their dead brothers up to dry down in the crypt. when all theflesh was rotted away, they would go down and decorate with the remaining bones.100 years later, they charge tourists to see it with a funny littleslogan on the roof as you enter, "visitors, be mindful, they were as you are today,and you will soon be as they are today," alright. so it's just a cheery little reminderabout your mortality halfway through

your vacation. rome is crowded withlots of tourists, lots of locals, and lots of thieves. thieves target tourists, and i would sayin all of europe, the place you're most likely to get pick-pocketed would bebarcelona and rome, okay. you're not gonna get mugged, there's no violent risk, if you'reusing common sense there's just the obvious risk of pickpocketing and pursesnatching, and if you're a thief in rome you go on the bus 69. that is the majorbus that goes from the train station to the vatican through the heart of thecity, packed with tourists and pickpockets. youcan see em' working on that bus. be on the ball, wear your money belt andunderstand that there are people

eyeballing you, tourists are targeted. it'sreally fun to go to the jewish ghetto. one of the early ghettos is in rome, infact the jewish community in rome is the oldest jewish community in europe. thatwas before the diaspora, before the destruction of the temple. there was ajewish community of merchants there before christ, and they've been in thislittle part of rome for over 2,000 years. to this day, jewish families whose lineage goesback 2,000 years gather together on their folding chairs andjust make the scene. and you can join them in the ghetto. across the river fromthe ghetto, you've got trastevere.

when you go across the river you get tothe "rough side of the tracks" kind of, in european terms, and there is trastevere.across the river, that's where your crusty poetry can be written, and thenalso on the other side of the river you've got the vatican museum. peoplewould bury their dead outside of the city walls, and st. peter was buried in alittle humble graveyard on vatican hill. trastevere, literally 'across thetiber river," is a fascinating place to wander and check out. and then justbeyond that you've got, of course, st. peter's. remember, there was a chariotrace course here before there was a roman catholic church, and for halftimeentertainment they would kill christians,

and st. peter was one of these who wasmartyred there. and after the chariot race course--this obelisk, you see, was aa decoration point on that chariot race course--st. peter would have seen thisobelisk on the day he was killed. his followers took his body to a little hillnearby and buried him there in the vatican hill, and for 300 yearsor 200 years, christians would worship quietly after dark, low profilebecause it wasn't okay. and then in 312, the emperor constantine became achristian, and christianity became the leader religion of the empire. by 390 wasthe only permissible religion, and you've got yourself a huge church built on thetomb of st. peter's. st. peter was the

first pope, and from him we have all thepope's to this day. and this is the center of a billion catholic christiansand, it's a beautiful place to check out, the cathedral itself is an amazing place.if you're going to europe in christmastime, rome is a great place to be.this is the square at christmas with a giant manger scene. and when i look atthat dome right there, i'm looking at the dome that michelangelo designed.taller than a football field on end. you can go to the very top, it's an amazing,amazing thing. getting back to christmas in rome, christmas lasts until epiphany,january 6, the twelfth day of christmas when jesusgot the gifts from the three wise men.

and you've got a big celebration on thatday and lots of celebrations before that. and rome is really festive duringchristmas, it's a fun time to be there. when you see a guy with a bushy beardand a key that is saint peter, and you see him all over the place around thevatican. when you step into that glorious basilica, you look to the inside ofthe dome and you see writing in letters as tall as me, each one of those six feet tall. and it says,"you are peter, and upon this rock i will build my church." see that's the reason forthe importance of that church in christendom. you step into the church andyou're just wonderstruck. one of my great

treats as a guide is to take my groupsinto that church. i go in first and watch people as they step inside. it's anincredible space. for years i went to st. peter's basilica as a lutheran withan attitude, and it was a horrible experience, i didn't enjoy it. park your protestant sword, if you haveone, at the door. become a catholic, at least temporarily,when you go to st. peter's basilica. see it on its terms. celebrate it. it's anamazing place. if you like to go to church, any day of the year you can go tochurch at five o'clock right there on the tomb of st. peter's, and actuallyexperienced that church doing what it

was designed to do, to facilitate worship. it'san amazing, amazing experience. of course, in the church you've got some great art, you'vegot michelangelo's pieta. and this is one of the great art treasures of europe, and justto see that right there, where it was supposed to be, is just so great. you can climb to thetop of the dome. when michelangelo had built his dome, remember here he said, "ican build a bigger but not more beautiful than my dome in florence," but this was thebiggest dome to be built in europe, it's really quite an inspiration. and you cango to the very top, and from the top you can get a view of that little countrycalled the vatican. you can get a view of the great square, and that obelisk, andyou can look out into the city of rome,

and you can look down on the sistinechapel from the top of that dome. that rectangular building is the sistinechapel, and if you want to go to the sistine chapel you gotta walk through,what i think, must be the biggest museum around the vatican museum. and the highlight, the finale, theculmination of that museum experience, is the sistine chapel. the vatican museum itselfis amazing, it's very very crowded and it's gonna becrowded when you're there, there's no way around the crowd, it's just a mob scene allday long. i think it's worth it. most tourists stick to the main route, you know,but you can verge off of that and have

a lot of peace and quiet if you like, butit's just an amazing thing. you got the art treasures of western civilization, the laocoon, you got apollo belvedere, you got lots of beautiful rooms all designed and frescoed by raphael, and when youget to those rooms you're gonna have a human traffic jam. it's gonna be thiscrowded, and you're just gonna shuffle through with all the mobs, everybody withtheir cameras up, videoing the thing, you know, and it's just, you can get a badattitude about it, but i'll warn you right now, gird yourself for the crowd, and justlook above the masses of sweaty people, and enjoy the wonder of art 500 years ago that brought europe-- helped

bring europe into our modern age. thefinale, the reward for all those crowds, is the sistine chapel. and on the ceilingyou've got the whole story of creation designed by michael, painted bymichelangelo, frescoed by michelangelo, god giving adam the spark of life. andthen, much later on, the pope asks michelangelo to come back down and paintthe last judgment above the altar, a whole different part of art history. theceiling was high renaissance, this is counter reformation.martin luther, the protestant reformation, has torn european in half, there's all sorts ofwars everywhere, the catholic army of spain has actually plundered rome, sackedrome, and the church is reeling. and the

church is coming out swinging with theircounter reformation art, and here we have jesus coming down on judgment day, his fistsraised, mary is cowering at his side. you used to be able to go to mary for some help, but she'ssaying, "i can't do anything right now, he's really, really intense right now." andthere's people, people are going to hell, and people are going to heavenaccording to how they followed the dictates of the church. counterreformation art. understand who pays for the art, and why, what's the context.all across europe your sightseeing experience becomes muchbetter. there are different overlays of your roman experience, youcan do ancient rome, you can do baroque

rome, you can do catholic rome, youcan do fascist rome, you can do today's shopper's rome, and antique rome, you canalso do pilgrim's rome. and a lot of us neglect that whole fascinating slice ofrome, but a lot of people come to rome on a pilgrim's agenda, not on a tourist's agenda. you can climb the holy steps, the scala santa, as people have been doingfor centuries. these are the steps to pontius pilate's mansion, brought back torome from the holy land by constantine's mother in the fourth century. and eversince then, pilgrims have come to rome, said the lord's prayer on each stepas they climb it on their knees, hoping to get less time off in purgatory. a lot of italians don't go to church a lot, but if

they ever have a near miss on theirmotorcycle they'll go right down to church, and hang their helmet up rightthere on this chapel where you got this saint that you thank when you have anear death experience on your motorcycle. you know, catholicism is really inthe dna of catholics and you find that when you go to the churches. i mentionedfascist italy. mussolini had a chance to really, really pump it up duringhis reign, and build a lot of impressive buildings. and you can go out to afuturistic, planned city called eur when you're in rome. eur is achance to see what society would be like if it gave the reins to a fascistdictator. it's no question asked,

it's either you're with us or against us,it's violent, neopagan, super duper patriotism. it's all of everybody in lockstep. it'sreally a chilling kind of thing and you really see it at eur, you really seeit, i find it quite powerful. outside of rome, just half an hour, is the ancientport of ostia antica. now if you don't have time to go to pompeii which is theultimate ancient site, three hours south of rome, go to pompeii-- or go to ostia, it's justhalf an hour away and it rivals pompeii, it's amazing, ostia antica. at night the floodlights come on, people come out, the police close down the main drag, and everybodyis out making the scene, strolling. in italy, of course, that's the "passiagata." in romeit's a little coarser, it's called the

"struscio," that's the "great rubbing."everybody's out rubbing and you're saying "bello" or "bella," make sure youget your gender right, and people are sizing everybody up, it's sort of a meatmarket out in the streets. it's multi-generational, everybody's outchecking out the scene, cruising up and down the via del corso i find itfascinating, one of the great sights of rome is just to be out in the eveningstrolling the via del corso, or sit down at a nice corner, pay too much for a cupof coffee or a drink, and watch the whole scene in front of you, it's a beautifulthing to do in rome. all over italy you got that great coffee culture and you cancertainly enjoy that. i love to lace

together the great night spots in rome,and when i do that i find that i can go from the campo de fiori to the piazzanavona with its wonderful fountains, you can drop by the spanish steps, and youcan go to the trevi fountain. and the trevi fountain is one of the romantic sites of romantic europe, wherepeople from all over the world gather to throw a coin over their shoulders toguarantee that they'll return to the great city of rome, the eternal city ofrome. you know, i throw a coin over my shoulder and it works, you go back everyyear if you want to, but i think if you're on a tight budget you don'treally need to do that. rome is a brutal city. rome is, in so many ways, the capital, thefather of our civilization, and if you

prepare well for rome, it's also a veryenjoyable experience. i hope you enjoy rome. thank you. my mark of a good traveler is how they enjoy italy.and i want to remind you, italy is a challenge. italy is a littlebit of chaos, italy is unpredictable. italy, you gotta take it in stride. if you canembrace italy on its terms, you can enjoy it, but still you gotta be well-prepared.i always like to say, "if you like italy as far south as rome, go further southbecause it'll get better. if italy is getting on your nerves by the time youget down to rome, don't go further south

because it gets worse," okay. italy intensifies as you plungedeeper. let's take a few minutes and look at italy, south of rome. you knowwhen you go down to naples you find an urban jungle of italy. it is italy in theextreme, and for a lot of people it's just too much, but i absolutely lovenaples. it's a wonderful place to enjoy, it's the birthplace of pizza, it's thebirthplace, i believe, of sophia loren, it's a place where you've got incrediblestreet markets, and it's a place where, if you have good information, you can enjoyit and you can enjoy it safely, in spite of its rough-and-tumble reputation. here's acouple i met with ripped out pages from

my cruise guide, i want to remind youthat the cruise ships park right there, a 10 minute walk from all therough-and-tumble you'd imagine in naples, and you can get out, if you'rewell-organized, and enjoy naples, either as a side trip, you can settle in, and you cando it as a day from your cruise ship. there's something called "life in thestreet" that people even with a lot of money choose to have. they want to liveright downtown. in naples, people like the noise at night, they want to be close toit, they live in the streets. there's a lot of problems. i'm routinely in napleswhen there's a strike and they're not emptying the garbage. and the garbage isstacking up in the streets, and it starts

to smell a little bit ripe. i'm notgonna sweet, you know, sugar coat it, italy is rough- and-tumble, but in that package is someof the most rewarding travel you can enjoy in italy and in all of europe. thisis spaccanapoli, it's a street that goes back to back when the greeks named that city neapolis, the newcity, 2,500 years ago. step into the markets. wonderful marketsin italy, wonderful characters wonderful colors, a great chance for a photographer.remember mount vesuvius erupted 79 years after christ, and it--from the top of that hill a whole lot of a mud flow came down and buried pompeii.this is an ancient painting of mount

vesuvius before it erupted. it lost thetop third of that peak, and you can go to the top of mt. vesuvius today, it's hot,and look into the steaming cauldron of that crater. and then you can go down topompeii, the city that it buried in 79 ad. pompeii is a city that gives us an amazing,intimate look at what ancient rome was all about when it was stopped in itstracks with that eruption, 79 ad. you wander through the streets of pompeii,you go to the theaters, you drop by what were fast food stands, you step into thesauna and you understand where people would soak, and you go into the rich people'shomes, and you marvel at the frescoes on the walls. all from the 1st century,two thousand years ago. if you're going

to pompeii, i want to remind you that themost important art treasures of pompeii are in naples, in the national museum. soyou really need to think of pompeii as a two-part visit. yeah, you gotta seethe site, but all the art treasures, like this mosaic, are going to be in the cityof naples. while i think naples is a great city, it's a little bit too greedy for alot of people's comfort zone, and what's very interesting is just an hour to thesouth, just a short train ride on what called the "circumvesuviana," thecommuter train that circles mount vesuvius, you get down to sorrento.sorrento is a limoncello kind of resort. it's just a delight, lemon treeseverywhere, there's none of the intensity

of naples, a wonderful scene as people dothe passeggiata in the evening. and from there, it's the jumping-off pointfor enjoying the amalfi coast. the amalfi coast is the treacherous, exotic,expensive, jet-setty, celebrity resort coast ofitaly. it's so congested, the roads are so narrow, that have a system where canjust go one direction one day and another direction the other day. i do not likedriving on the amalfi coast, even if you can manage the driving, you can't reallyenjoy the scenery 'cause you're trying to stay on that cliff side road, and there'sno place to park when you get to the towns that you want to explore. it makesmore sense for you to take a bus or to

hire a local taxi or driver to take youout. plenty of beautiful restaurants, gorgeous towns. positano would be myfavorite town on the amalfi coast positano is a jet-setty resort town with abeautiful beach, lots of hills, and expensive hotels and restaurants. ilike to hire a taxi. this is my friend rafael, and he and his buddies take youaround on the coast. you hire him, it's kind of expensive, but he'll wait for youin three different places, and you have time to roam around, then you hop in thecar to go to the next place, it makes a lot of sense. one thing we try to dowith our guidebooks is let our travelers pool their resources. i have no financialinterest in this, i just like to let my

travelers share the luxury of theminibus with the guide. we've partnered with a company called mando tours that,for a very small price, will let you be one of eight people on a minibus leavingsorrento every morning, and sharing the cost of the guide and the minibus tourall along the amalfi coast. it's a very good thing to look into if you'd like todo the amalfi, and it's reliable. we've tested them, we were skeptical at first,they were really good, and it's a huge economy to be able to share that minibusand that guide with eight people. i hope you can sign up for that, you'll get the detailsin my rick steves italy book. from sorrento, you can take a quick boat outto capri, and ever since ancient roman

times this has been a hangout foremperors, and socialites, and big shots. roman emperors like to go out here for theirvacation. you can take the short boat from sorrento out to capri, and thepopular thing to do in capri, there's lots to see on the island but the realattraction for a lot of tourists, is the famous blue grotto. and you'll go therewith a tourist boat, and then you get off the big boat, you get into a little dingy, and you nervously scooch down into thebottom of your dinghy as you got your ruffian boatman that tells you, "get deepdown or you're going to lose your fingers," and then when the swell gets to a lowebb, he pulls the chain and he pulls you

through this tiny little hole in thewall, and bam, you're in the blue grotto. and it's just glorious. and he'll sing "o solomio," and then he'll say "i'm not going to take you out here unless you give memore money," and it's that kind of a gimmick, its a tourist trap, but it's a beautifultourist trap. and if you're going to capri, it's a delightful thing. nearby, you'vegot paestum, an amazing rome--ancient greek ruin. a reminder that 500 years before christ, southern italy was called magna grecia. it was a greekcolony. and if you really want to see greek ruins but you don't have time togo over to greece, you can see them just an hour south of naples at paestum. plentyof opportunities to enjoy south italy. if

you like, we have a tour of south italythat really is popular, and it goes to a lot of delightful stops south of naples.and while i don't have time to talk about it today, sicily is a popular destination in italy.this is a beautiful tour, winter or summer, there's plenty to see and do insicily, and if you want to know more about sicily go to our website ricksteves.com, go into the tv corner, and we've got a thirty minute programjust on sicily. you could download the script, and that would be what i have tooffer about sicily, along with our itinerary. when youare thinking about

traveling in southern italy,i want to remind you, italy is your intenseurban jungle-- or, naples is your intense urbanjungle of italy, and then an hour south you've got one ofthe most delightful resort towns anywhere, sorrento, which makesa beautiful home base for exploring thewonders of south italy. thank you very much, and happy travels. grazie, thank you,buon viaggio, buon viaggio.

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