Product Description

"The more money you spend, the bigger the wall you build between yourself and the culture you traveled so far to visit. Stay in the small inns, eat in family-style restaurants, visit out-of-the-way places, rub elbows with the locals. You'll spend less money and have a great time in the process."

This is Rick Steves's "back door" travel philosophy. For more than 25 years, he has traveled and led tours around Europe, finding and sharing the joy of simplicity and openness.

Along with tried-and-true tips on packing, transport, sleeping and eating well on a budget, and meeting the locals, Steves reveals more than 30 "back doors" found throughout Europe, from a tiny lake town in Austria to the narrowest gorge in the world, which winds through Crete. If Europe is your destination, this book is more important than your luggage. --Kathryn True

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Product Details

Publisher	Avalon Travel Publishing
ISBN	1598801082
Format	Paperback
Author	Rick Steves
EAN	9781598801088
Label	Avalon Travel Publishing
Edition	2009 Edition
Dewey Decimal Number	914.04559
Studio	Avalon Travel Publishing
Number Of Pages	756
Title	Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door 2009
Publication Date	2008-09-01
Manufacturer	Avalon Travel Publishing

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Customer Reviews

pretty good, very specific.

Review by Makila Fields, 2010-04-23

It did give me some good tips on europe, but I do like the regular rick steves guidebook to europe better.

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Good Tips For Seeing Europe

Review by Robert I. Hedges, 2010-04-13

I am generally a fan of Rick Steves, but "Europe Through The Back Door 2009," while useful, is not one of my favorites mostly due to its very uneven coverage of different countries. In my mind the best part of the book is "Part One: Travel Skills," in which Rick makes some extremely good points about European travel, from general advice to specifics on building itineraries, budgeting, language barriers, outsmarting thieves, and understanding different cultures. This is enormously good information, and is especially useful to less experienced travelers, while serving as an excellent refresher for more frequent travelers: "Part One" justifies four stars on its own.

"Part Two: Back Doors" is generally good, but has some shortcomings. This section deals with traveling in specific countries and regions, but is extremely unbalanced. Some countries get very thorough coverage (Italy gets 41 pages alone, France gets 21) while others get almost none (all of Scandinavia nets a total of 10 pages, while Belgium and the Netherlands manage a joint total of 11 pages, much of which concerns Amsterdam's counter-culture, and Dutch drug use.) Now don't misunderstand me, I fully realize that Italy and France are bigger tourist draws than Finland or Holland, but the lack of information on certain countries is a big detractor from the utility of this book for people who want to see more than London, Rome, and Paris.

Fans of Rick Steves know that the hand-rendered black and white maps are a constant in all his books, and this one is no exception. I actually enjoy these maps that show off not only cartographic skills, but individual biases and preferences about what should or should not be included on the maps. Having said that, other guidebooks have much more thorough maps of all the covered areas, and while they aren't as quirky and interesting as Steves', they are more useful. In other words, once you decide where you want to travel, I recommend another guidebook with more complete and conventional maps and information on your intended destination.

I recommend this guide to anyone planning a trip to Europe, but believe that most people will also need a secondary guide. That forms my one recommendation to Steves about this particular volume: keep up the good work, but including more information about less-traveled places would greatly enhance this book. Everybody and their brother can tell us about Italy or France, but a traveler of Steves' experience would prove invaluable in more off-the-wall locales. Tell us about the architecture of Rotterdam, or the values in eateries in Malmö, for instance. Having said all that, this is still a good book, and I recommend it (or the newer edition) accordingly.

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Very helpful guide for European travel

Review by Michele, 2010-01-31

This is a very helpful guide for European travel.
I look forward to taking it along in
my travels this Spring. This offers detailed
travel advice not given in the other books.

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Europe guide book

Review by Lynn Allen, 2010-01-30

Don't go anywhere in Europe without a Rick Steve's book. It was invaluable and is much more complete than all other traveler books.

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lots of info

Review by me, 2009-12-23

There is a ton of information in this book. Ideal if you are going to travel ALL over Europe.

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