Europe From a Backpack: November 2006

27.11.06

Photos: Barcelona

This slide show takes you on a whirlwind tour of Barcelona.
Flickr slide show

21.11.06

Cinque Terre is a series of 5 coastal villages on the Italian Riviera. Check out the video and you'll see why it's one of the top destinations in Italy.

Italy From a Backpack features stories from Cinque Terre by Julie Vick, Ryan Daniels, Ryan Forsythe, and Jeffrey James Keyes.

To learn more, Read Rick Steves' intro to Cinque Terre

Video: Granada Sunset

There's nothing quite like a sunset in Granada. You'll only appreciate this video if you've been there.

19.11.06

Ciao Italia

Italy From a Backpack is now in stores. Here's a sneak preview from the introduction.

Ask any traveler to Europe’s “Boot” (lo Stivale), “Why Italy?” and he or she responds with the almost inarticulate bemusement of someone in the infatuation phase of a love affair. Italy is irresistible. We return again and again for the cuisines, the wines, the festivals, the unique regions and attitudes—all rooted in the very soil under the traveler’s feet.

If you live in the West or speak any Romance or Germanic language, you can trace roots back to here, in the Roman and Greek Empires, even if you’re not Italian. Your diet probably depends in part—or entirely—on Italian cuisine: pizza, spaghetti and meatballs with parmesan and crusty garlic bread, minestrone, mineral water, Caesar salad (invented in Florida, actually, but since it’s named after Caesar…) and gelato. You may have salivated over Ferraris and Lamborghinis; perhaps you appreciate Italian style and the composure with which Italians approach life. They may promptly finish their midday espressos standing at narrow, high-top tables, but Italians will take three or four hours to enjoy a dinner that doesn’t begin until at least 8 p.m. Ah, simple pleasures.

Italy From a Backpack is full of pleasures, too—stories of young people whose discoveries make delightful, even surprising reading. My co-editor, Mark Pearson, hatched this idea for books about youthful European travels when he returned home from studying art history in Rome and backpacking around Europe. He found that people weren’t so interested in viewing his 2,200 digital photos. Instead, they wanted to hear great stories.
Read the rest of the Italy intro

Spain Introduction

Here is the introduction to our new book, Spain From a Backpack.

Welcome to Spain, the Iberian Peninsula, the 12th-century western border of the Moorish Empire, jump-off point to mysterious Africa. You hold the gateway in your hands: By opening Spain From a Backpack, you are transporting yourself for the next marvelous moments to the España of blocky Basque castles, intricate Moorish designs and fanciful Gaudi creations. And welcome to a different pace of life—a pace informed by centuries of artful and bloody history, where we rise and start work early, siesta in the afternoon, and stay up late. We shop for our food every few days in open-air markets, for olives and tapenade, crusty breads, cheeses, meats, fresh tomatoes and garlic, and we cook for the joy of it. We go out for tapas in the evening, then dine in leisure, never bothered by waiters repeatedly asking, “May I take your plate?”

This is how our book series started: My co-editor, Mark Pearson, observed lots of Europe guidebooks on the market, all explaining where to go and what to do, but few books that tell what it’s like to actually be in Europe; and virtually none written by and for backpackers. These twenty- or thirty-somethings carry their worldly possessions on their backs, traveling on a shoestring budget. Backpackers decide each day where they will go and what they will do, and, often, they experience marvels that elude people who carry suitcases and make reservations. Every year, nearly two million American, and hundreds of thousands of British, Canadian and Australian, backpackers are drawn to Europe for travel, study and work.
Read the rest of the Spain Intro