Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door

You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when traveling through Europe. With Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door, you’ll learn how to:

• Plan your itinerary and maximize your time
• Pack light and right
• Find good-value hotels and restaurants
• Travel smoothly by train, bus, car, and plane
• Avoid crowds and tourist scams
• Hurdle the language barrier
• Understand cultural differences and connect with locals
• Save money while enjoying the trip of a lifetime

After 40+ years of exploring Europe, Rick considers this travel skills handbook his life’s work, and with his expert introductions to the top destinations in Europe, choosing your next trip will be easy and stress-free. Using the travel skills in this book, you’ll experience the culture like a local, spend less money, and have more fun.

• "The country's foremost expert in European travel for Americans."

  Forbes

• "Steves is an absolute master at unlocking the hidden gems of the world's greatest cities, towns, and monuments."

  USA Today

• “Every country-specific travel guidebook from the Rick Steves publishing empire can be counted upon for clear organization, specificity and timeliness."

  Society of American Travel Writers

• "Pick the best accommodations and restaurants from Rick Steves…and a traveler searching for good values will seldom go wrong or be blindsided."

  NBC News

• "His guidebooks are approachable, silly, and even subtly provocative in their insistence that Americans show respect for the people and places they are visiting and not the other way around."

  The New Yorker

• "Travel, to Steves, is not some frivolous luxury—it is an engine for improving humankind, for connecting people and removing their prejudices, for knocking distant cultures together to make unlikely sparks of joy and insight. Given that millions of people have encountered the work of Steves over the last 40 years, on TV or online or in his guidebooks, and that they have carried those lessons to untold other millions of people, it is fair to say that his life’s work has had a real effect on the collective life of our planet."

  The New York Times Magazine

• "[Rick Steves] laces his guides with short and vivid histories and a scholar's appreciation for Renaissance art yet knows the best place to start an early tapas crawl in Madrid if you have kids. His clear, hand-drawn maps are Pentagon-worthy; his hints about how to go directly to the best stuff at the Uffizi, avoid the crowds at Versailles and save money everywhere are guilt-free."

  TIME Magazine

• "Steves is a walking, talking European encyclopedia who yearns to inspire Americans to venture 'beyond Orlando.'"

  Forbes

• “…he’s become the unofficial guide for entire generations of North American travelers, beloved for his earnest attitude and dad jeans."

  Outside Magazine

• "His books offer the equivalent of a bus tour without the bus, with boiled-down itineraries and step-by-step instructions on where to go and how to get there, but adding a dash of humor and an element of choice that his travelers find empowering."

  The New York Times

• "His penchant for creating meaningful experiences for travelers to Europe is as passionate as his inclination for making ethical choices his guiding light."

  Forbes

• "[Rick Steves'] neighborhood walks are always fun and informative. His museum guides, complete with commentary about historic sculpture and storied artworks are wonderful and add another dimension to sometimes stodgy, hard-to-comprehend museums."

  NBC News