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EnglishWhere to Find Europe Trip-Planning Advice and Resources on ricksteves.com
Updated
ricksteves.com organizes its trip-planning help into a few main sections: Explore Europe for destination guides, Travel Tips for practical how-to advice, the Travel Forum for traveler-to-traveler questions, and supporting resources such as the travel store, guidebook updates, and free video and radio content. All of these are reachable from the site's main navigation, so you can move between them without creating an account. The sections below explain what each one covers and when to use it.
Explore Europe: Start With the Destination
The homepage's Explore Europe area asks "Where do you want to go in Europe?" and features a rotating destination — at the time of the site snapshot, Greece. This is the place to begin if your trip is still a blank map: pick a country or region, then work outward to the cities and sights you want to see.
Use it when you need orientation rather than logistics — deciding which countries fit a two-week window, or which regions pair well on one itinerary. Once you have a shortlist, move to Travel Tips for the practical planning.
Travel Tips: Itinerary, Packing, Transport, Food, and Sleep
The Travel Tips section states it covers "everything from itinerary planning and packing to transportation, eating, and sleeping." That maps directly onto the decisions most independent travelers face:
| Planning decision | What the section addresses |
|---|---|
| Route and timing | Itinerary planning |
| What to bring | Packing |
| Getting around | Transportation |
| Where and what to eat | Eating |
| Where to stay | Sleeping |
This is the best single stop for first-time planners who want general guidance before booking anything. Read the itinerary and transportation material together, since route choices usually determine which trains, buses, or flights you'll need.
Travel Forum: Ask Other Travelers
The Travel Forum is described as a place to "share tips with other travelers." Reach it from the main navigation or the "Travel Forum" link in the header area. It suits specific, situational questions — a particular connection, a neighborhood, a seasonal crowd issue — better than broad research, which the destination and tips sections already handle.
Supporting Resources
Beyond the core planning sections, the site offers several auxiliary tools:
- Our Tours — information on Rick Steves' small-group tours, described as "51 finely crafted itineraries for 2027." Useful if you're weighing a guided tour against independent travel.
- Shop / Rick's Travel Store — "everything you need for packing – and planning your dream trip to Europe."
- Guidebook Updates — a dedicated page for corrections and changes to published guidebooks, worth checking if you're traveling with an older edition.
- Watch, Read, Listen — TV shows (including a one-hour "Best of London" special), a weekly radio show, and Classroom Europe, a free library of 400+ video clips from the TV shows for teachers and students.
- Monday Night Travel — a weekly Zoom session with Rick and his team of "travel-savvy teachers."
- Lessons from the Road and Travel News — recurring editorial features on the homepage.
A Practical Order of Operations
- Explore Europe — choose countries and rough regions.
- Travel Tips — build the itinerary, then sort transport, packing, food, and lodging.
- Guidebook Updates — verify anything from a printed guide is still current.
- Travel Forum — resolve the specific questions that remain.
- Shop and Tours — only if you need gear or are considering a guided option.
Accounts exist for tours and the forum ("My Account," "Tour Account"), but the planning content itself is browsable from the public navigation. Prices, tour costs, and any login requirements for specific features aren't specified in the available site information, so confirm those on the relevant page before relying on them.