Rick Steves' Europe's Cameron Hewitt's Best Travel Advice - Honest Travel Podcast

Cameron has been writing for Rick Steves for quite some time. Everyone wants to go to the same places. Often it's driven by social media, what's trending, the influencers are pushing a place. Yeah, with the extreme weather and how people are doing, and you mentioned shoulder season, the off seasons. Yeah, that's one thing I was recommending. You said, hey, if you don't have kids in school, you can say it. Challenge yourself to say, I want to go beyond the really famous, obvious places. Hey there fellow travelers, Mark here with Walter's World and we're back with another Honest Travel Podcast. My friend Shev, say hey. Hello. we're back again and we haven't been around for a bit because we've both been traveling so much this summer and it's time for fall fun and we have an extremely special guest someone that I actually have a number of his books back on my shelves Cameron Hewitt from Rick Steves Publishing and all the fun travel stuff they do he's going to be on here in a little bit but Shebs where have you been the last few months my friend because it's been it's been a crazy ride for both of us yeah it's been very busy I went to Austria and Salzburg anyway and I managed to see the opening of the new museum the sound of music which was absolutely amazing and I also hyped up Werfen where they filmed the film as well so that was really cool and I also went to Italy as well went to Pisa which is really funny because I messaged you saying Mark a video's just come out and I'm heading to Pisa in five days so I watched your video it was fantastic gave me some hints and tips as well and then went to a place called Via Reggio which we've talked about before we came on you've been there it's been a long time since i was there not not super long in terms of things but it's been a while you've also been traveling you went to New York the Comic-Con which i'm quite jealous about i've wanted to go to that for a long long while so how was that yeah New York Comic-Con was fun i mean the cosplay there it's funny like i was there Thursday Friday Saturday and as the week goes on the people get a little more crazy and the clothes get a bit a little bit less when it comes to the cosplay as the week goes but it's really fun honestly compared to San Diego Comic-Con you haven't much people are actually it's people think californians are super nice and they are but San Diego Comic-Con people get all hustle and bustle versus New York it's funny you can go down the street and cosplay and it's just another Saturday just went to Europe this summer for quite some time we uh see we're in Italy and France Spain Portugal where you still live you have that been traveling quite a bit actually back home for i think i'm i think i'm i think it said it's 37 seven days till the next check-in so i have like a month home until the next adventure so pretty cool pretty good time but they're not here to listen to us talk about our travels they're here talk about our guest Cameron Hewitt please welcome our guest Cameron Hewitt Cameron has been writing for Rick Steves for quite some time if you're not sure Rick Steves the definitive kind of made Europe available to Americans and travelers around the world super respect to Rick Steves whole the whole crew that they have there it's a it's an empire of people helping people travel and making people comfortable to travel one of the things we've tried to do over the years is empower people to travel and Rick and his entire team like Cameron are the ones that really like we're trying to follow in their footsteps to help make Europe accessible and i want to not make fun but i want to show like this is how long i have i was going through my Rick Steves books and i found the best of Eastern Europe 2004 and if i look here on the cover page i don't know if you can see it but it says Rick Steves and Cameron Hewitt so uh cam welcome to the Honest Travel Podcast it's great to have you on thank you so much Mark and Chebs it's great to be here i can't my mouth is open i can't believe you have that that's the first edition we've changed the name now to Central Europe to because that's it's sort of old-fashioned to think of these places but yeah no that's that's the first edition of the first guidebook that i ever wrote from scratch uh that was 20 yeah 22 years ago so it's been a while thought you would appreciate that because i have a croatian one with you and there's another one back there but then i found this and i'm like oh i think this is what he's gonna like so i had to share that with you my friend oh that's a classic yeah you just came back from europe yourself tell tell people where you were what you're up to i just got back a week ago from my third trip this year to europe uh this week this trip was about a month so i was in Croatia, which is in that book you just held up. I was updating our Croatia guidebook for a couple weeks. There's the Croatia guidebook. Yeah, that's the book I was updating. And I also went through Bosnia. I had a wonderful road trip through Bosnia, kind of took a little break from Croatia and drove through Bosnia for a few days, which I just adore. And then at the end of that, that was about three weeks altogether. And I'd never been south of about Sorrento in Italy. So I just had some extra time at the end of my travel year. And I went over to South Italy and spent some time in Puglia and whatever to Matera uh so I just had an absolute blast in South Italy just a week ago people like they get to like the Amalfi Coast they like don't go farther down maybe they go to Sicily but yeah go to like Bari, Puglia, Polignano a Mare, Matera, Alberobello that's such a nice place to be but I want to ask you so I was in Bosnia too and did you really feel like Bosnia was kind of like traveling 10-20 years ago when you're going around oh I think Bosnia is one of the great undiscovered tourist destinations absolutely it feels like a time travel the prices feel like time travel I just I didn't get over my first I've been in Croatia for you know a week or 10 days and then my first dinner in Bosnia I did a double take when I got the bill I couldn't believe it was like like half or less than half what I've been paying and also just it's it's kind of rugged it's a little rough around the edges but not in a unpleasant way kind of in a fun adventurous way and you know Bosnians are known for being incredibly hospitable and friendly so it's very easy to get around um there's a little bit of an English barrier in a few places which is kind of fun these days i stayed in a b&b one night where the people didn't speak any english so we communicated with gestures and with uh google translate uh it was fun yeah i had a blast you're right it felt like kind of a retro travel experience yeah it was like back in the day when you're writing your first book and i was going around i used to i was living in eastern europe at that time so like this is one of those things i was using back in the day and that was the thing it's like the prices took you back i know when we were there with my family um we like stopped and had lunch and then we were leaving later in the evening i'm like no no we can stop again have another bit like just because we're going back to croatia you know after a few days we're like just just get all the food down because you can eat so well and you're right the people are so fun like everybody would be like should i get bought a rakia i'm like no i'm not okay man i got a car i gotta drive oh well maybe you want your son i'm like he's 15 it's okay it was so it was a great time you're right bosnia was fun so let's talk about like one thing i didn't know like in bosnia versus you know the croatia side of this idea of like people talking about for the last few years over tourism and the over like over saturation of tourism and going from dubrovnik i don't know if you're in dubrovnik but if you're going from croatia where you have just like piles of tourists then just going a little bit farther to bosnia or montenegro or albania like the numbers really change but overall like what have you seen what's been your experience and expertise in cities i mean like the venice is in amsterdam like what are they kind of doing to kind of combat overtourism, and what can we as travelers do as well? Well, first of all, you're exactly right. What I've really noticed, there's always been a trend where, you know, certain places have been crowded and busy. It's really gotten to an extreme, and what I really notice is more and more people are going to a shorter and shorter list of places. Everyone wants to go to the same places. Often it's driven by social media, what's trending, the influencers are pushing a place. And my big theme, and our theme at Rick Steves Europe recently, is, yeah, the famous places are still great, but there's so much great undiscovered stuff you literally get on a train you mentioned venice you get on a train you ride 20 minutes and you're in treviso and there's a hundredth of the number of tourists and it's not quite as over the top romantic as Venice but it definitely has its own kind of uh personality and has canals and it's got great food and it's got beautiful architecture and like you said I was on the Dalmatian coast I was in in places like Split and Dubrovnik that are just completely overrun and then you drive a couple hours into Bosnia you don't have to go even a couple hours but in this case a couple hours into Bosnia and you just have these towns entirely to yourself I mean I looked around and I was in some smaller towns uh Jajce, Travnik where I looked around and I was like I think I'm the only American I've seen in this town in the last hour uh and it's a fun feeling that's something I noticed is like we drove from Poland down to Albania and then from Albania up into Montenegro and Croatia and Bosnia and I'll tell you the idea of over tourism didn't really exist because we were going around there are very few tourists in general in those spots like the former eastern or we'd say like central Europe now and I think that's one thing that looks to you over tourism you're right when it those the the influencers and I mean where we like to consider ourselves like travel educators not travel influencers but we get lumped together and I mean when you go you see they all go to the same places like I was in Greece a couple years ago and one of our friends they they used to run like 20 or 30 apartments in Crete and they were leaving like usually we stay till October we're leaving the end of August because nobody's coming i'm like what are you talking about Greece is getting hits see all the videos and everything they're like no Athens Santorini and Mykonos that's what's getting hit and they're right because we were in Athens which is my favorite city to go to in Greece and it was like us and the other other tourists that were there were like Greek Americans that were coming back to show their family when they come back every year versus in Athens where you couldn't move it's amazing how there's like the places that are really hit and then there's everything else it's like hey you're you're on your own yeah i was in Athens man exactly what you mean even today uh everyone's got the same bucket list and again it doesn't mean they're bad places it just means you're going to expect them to be very crowded very expensive and it's it's i i'm really pushing hard the idea of you know you can go if you need to go once in your life to the big famous places go ahead but add a couple places that sort of balance it out so that you get a more local perspective a little less crowded a little lower prices um so that's that's been kind of a theme in my travels recently for sure let me ask you Cameron what strategies practical strategies would you recommend people taking so they don't miss out on these destinations because obviously they're probably going to be on people's bucket list like the Dubrovniks or Sicily or wherever people want to go to that that is high on demand what sort of practical strategies would you recommend yeah I mean the first strategy I think is just an attitude adjustment change your expectations like sort of challenge yourself to say I want to go beyond the really famous obvious places so first it's sort of like being open to the possibility of going beyond these places that everyone else is telling you about. And then I think do a little deeper research. These places are not that hard to find, but they do require a little more effort than just passively, you know, scrolling your social media or looking at the first chapter of the guidebook, you know, do a little additional research, figure out what you like. And if there's something that would tick the boxes of what you like, I was part of why I wanted to spend more time in Bosnia is I've done that a few times. And every time I go and go somewhere different, I always love what i find so i i went to yet another little corner of bosnia on this trip in addition to going to favorite places and it's because i know what i like i know that i like these small towns i love the kind of obscure Tito era Yugoslav history i pulled over at some incredible roadside monuments that no one's visited for 30 years if only tito knew i'm sure you heard that a few times over the years yeah exactly no so just yeah uh do a little deeper research and again challenge yourself to go beyond the same places that that everyone else is going you have to be okay and be open to just trying new things because once you do that it's easy not just to do paris but to go other places and i think that's one of the things like if they're i mean if they're reading Rick Steves or they're watching our videos they already are probably there like you know but it's getting the word out to other people like hey here's other things you can do to get more out of your trip so like for like a one-on-one like in-person kind of thing would you give any advice for travelers like hey how can you aside from like being open like little habits they could do to help maybe not get overrun by the over-tourism in some of the destinations that are the over-touristed or not over-touristed? I think timing is a big part of it, both the time of the year and the time of the day. So just be aware in places like Dubrovnik, places that get a lot of cruise ships, you just want to be out of the old town from about mid-early to mid-morning through about mid-afternoon because all of the population of the old town doubles or triples depending on how many ships are around. So all the locals in these towns in Croatia and a lot of places that get cruises tell you linger enjoy spend your time in the old center early and late and just kind of get out of town when all the crowds are there and then there's the time of year i mean we're coming into off season right now we're heading into deep in October and not when everyone else is going for for like beachy destinations that's like july and august uh for americans a lot of americans especially kind of retirees or people who who don't have kids in school uh september and may are huge months for travel but they're still less crowded than july and august for a lot of places but it kind of tapers off from july and august and there's a little bump in maybe may and september but once you get into october once you're going in april or march these places the the numbers of tourists drop dramatically so timing your trip in a smart way can really help it's funny like i look at our budget because we travel a lot you travel a lot and you probably notice it's a few more dollars these days to get the same trip we had before so kind of looking at this um where do we're used to i mean i'm seeing the steepest price changes actually the flights are somewhat but for me it's been more like accommodation has gone up quite a bit for me the last few years like i'm noticing because you know we track all our expenses and everything and i'm like what used to be the like 75 euro hotels are now 150 now what are you seeing where the biggest like price getting uh like kind of sticking it to us or at least going up not sticking it to us because we're all prices are going up, but just in general? Absolutely. Accommodations, restaurants, especially ones that are aimed at tourists, even tourist attractions. You know, I keep talking about Croatia because I was just there. They're kind of the worst case scenario, I think, of prices going up because you have several. So what causes all of this? You have several factors there. One is just they're facing the same inflation that we're all facing. There is, you know, all these geopolitical forces that are driving prices up, the high prices of oil. So just like in the u.s everything is more expensive even for local people uh so that's one layer croatia is kind of an interesting case because they got the euro a couple of years ago and so a lot of business people a lot of people who ran a hotel or something they were converting from the old currency the kuna to the euro and while they were at it legally they had to keep it one-to-one for like six months but as soon as that six-month period expired they kind of jacked up their prices i also think there's a mentality of you know people have to make their money especially in a seasonal destination like Greece or Croatia or parts of Italy you have a shorter season so you have to make your money during not you know 12 months to make a year's salary you have six months or four months or five months um so all of that kind of combines to what you're describing which is i've been traveling in Croatia for 25 30 years i think and the prices have kind of continually been going up but the last five five ten years since especially since COVID it's just through the roof i couldn't believe what some hotels were charging uh because that's what i'm doing when i'm over there i'm updating our prices for museums and restaurants and hotels and uh so i think that's that's that's what i'm doing exactly so so this so you're telling me these 2004 prices aren't good anymore no i would not use a 2004 oh my god i can't even imagine how much more stuff is that's one thing is i did you have it back in the day where it was like kind of have yeah they you have like the three here's one thing if you get old guidebooks with Rick Steves what's nice is they would have like dollar signs next to it so it's a three stick if it's got three dollar signs next to feels expensive it has one it's one it's it's a budget and that's one thing it's like you have to understand it's like how prices change so much i mean it's gotta be tough for guidebook writers to keep up on the prices kind of stuff i mean i guess you go online and check things but like what is budget what isn't i mean that's one thing i liked about the guidebooks you guys have is even if i read an older one it gives me it's going to be expensive so i have that mentality going forward but like for you i mean that's got to be a tough part of the job is just kind of keeping up with those things every time we update the book we update the prices of the hotels But we also look at what we define as the $1 sign, the $2 sign, the $3 sign. And in the last five years, again, especially with all this inflation that we're all dealing with, we've had to nudge those up. So what used to be a top, you know, a $4 sign hotel used to be 150 euros. And now it's anything above 250 euros because we just have to acknowledge the reality that the baseline is going up. And by the way, the same goes for restaurants, especially tourist-oriented restaurants. I was in Dubrovnik. I had a couple of dinners there that were nice, kind of not high end, but they were kind of upper mid-range, upscale, you know. I think they were like 60 euros just for me, you know, to have a nice dinner with an appetizer and a main and a drink and a dessert maybe. And then I went to South Italy and I barely spent, out of, I don't know, 10 different meals, I probably spent no more than 35 on average. So a lot of it's very destination sensitive as well. food expenses so to not lose the the authentic experience so there are places where i've been to around the world where you have to go into the middle where to get those those experiences what would be your tips then to sort of not sacrifice those experiences and would you have to accommodate by sort of maybe going for a cheaper hotel or what would your tips be on that then well the same advice is the same that's always been true rick's been preaching about this for you know, 40 or 50 years. You want to find a restaurant that has, for example, a short handwritten menu in one language. And this is kind of his little code. It's short because it's based on what's fresh today at the market. It's in one language, the local language, because it's catering to locals rather than tourists. You want something that is really catering to locals, that's really fresh and that is affordable. Usually that it means getting off the main drag. So I was in Dubrovnik, for example, and there's a restaurant row called Piaia where there's all these kind the flashy restaurants that have these fancy meals you've been there and i i've been up and down that street a million times over the last 25 30 years and it's just everything there is 10 20 30 percent more than restaurants you find if you kind of go off in the back street so i think the main thing is get away if you're in italy if you're on this beautiful grand piazza and there's a restaurant that has a menu with pictures that's in four different languages and it's like got 50 items on it, they are catering entirely to tourists, and they're charging tourist prices. And if you have a good guidebook, if you do your research, if you know where to go, you can literally often walk a block or two away, and you find a little hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop place, and they've got half the price, much friendlier, much better quality food. And so those are practical tips that have been true forever, and they're still as true as ever. I think adding social media and kind of these places that go viral, either because they're heavily reviewed on TripAdvisor or because they've been picked up by influencers, that adds another wrinkle because a lot of places that have a long line out front are trendy and they're trending and they're viral, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're good. It doesn't necessarily mean they're better than other places. And so that's the other thing I would regard with suspicion, places that are too busy, too crowded, because sometimes that kind of this sort of vortex of self-promotion and influencers copycatting each other turns into a situation where a place that's good gets treated like it's the best place in town and there's really good places sometimes just a few steps away that are just as good that people miss because they haven't seen it on their social media feed and i was in pisa i was texting mark i said mark you've been there shall i eat right next to the to the piece at leaning tower and you went no no no no keep walking just keep walking you'll probably find better keep walking keep walking you'll find better restaurant and he was absolutely right i went further down five minutes away amazing restaurants and they were a lot more cheaper as well and they were really authentic as well because a lot of the locals were eating there so you're absolutely right the tip is just and they and you're absolutely right now that you mentioned that there was like food i noticed there was english there was italian there was spanish there was german i think as well so i didn't really clock on to that but now that you've mentioned it it makes sense they're probably going to be really expensive because of the fact that they're in different languages as well and you know one of the problems with the Dubrovnik that i mentioned uh why i was paying so much there certain destinations like that there really aren't tourist places in the old town i'm sorry local places in the old town virtually every restaurant in the old town caters to tourists and there's there are a lot of towns like that around europe so there if i you know i decided i'd rather have the nice atmosphere and pay a little extra um but it becomes harder when you're in like a small town that has a lot of tourists because local when i ask locals where do you eat in Dubrovnik they say we we drive or take the bus 15 minutes out of town because there really isn't anything catering to locals in the old town and so that's the other thing you have to kind of be able to discern places where you can actually find those local places like you said sometimes you're willing just for the atmosphere i'm going to pay it because the atmosphere i mean it's like you know what you are going to pay more for that beer in the you know the historic square in in pride but you get that view so you're like yeah willing to pay that for it and i think you know it was when i was in new york and one of the biggest thing the locals tell me there was like mark please put in there that tiktok trend does not equal tastiness and it's true i always tell me it's like look if it was really good it would already be a new york tradition if it's trending and you see a huge line notice that nobody there is actually from new york city they saw people coming in after six months it's going to be gone i always feel like the cheese pull the better the cheese pull probably the less taste of the cheese is that's one of those things they're like i'm like yeah i mean that's one thing it's like people just see the trend and that's one thing social media is giving people ideas which is fantastic but you're right it rehashes the same one and they kind of have a little you know like snowball effect of making it more and more they go to that one place rick steve's got books are fantastic for that because you're going to find the place to go and then the food that you should try and if you don't get that restaurant you're you have an idea what to look for i think that's one thing people can really beat the tourist like horde trend kind of stuff sometimes it's really nice so i want to say thank you for that and my mom wants to say she loves rick and uh she she does not listen to me she listens to him well thanks for saying that yeah and you know what i like about uh how we approach it and rick's been doing this uh from when he first wrote the books we have a whole team working on them now but we just we tell it like we call it we're very honest we're very candid like you said sometimes it's worth paying extra for less good food to sit in a beautiful place but in our book we'll say that we'll say you know this isn't high cuisine but it's an amazing view worth paying for but we kind of give you the information if you want that you can find it if you want something that's a little more local down the side street we'll help you find that as well now well the big thing this summer we're gonna changing topics so it'll come back again extreme weather like this summer in europe and last summer europe the year before the summers have been really brutal like we had friends of ours they were doing a germany trip and they were going to Bauhaus which is the equivalent of like a best buy or a home depot and they were in line to buy box fans to take them where they were going because there was no ac nothing like that your experiences with these unexpected like heat waves hit or anything like the transit disruption these weather delays you know what's your best advice for like pivoting the itinerary or kind of dealing with these surprise kind of things well unfortunately you're right that's just the way things are it's going to i think get worse this summer i was in the alps i was in the austrian italian german alps i was in berchtesgaden one night and i think it was that they were a degree or two off of their all-time high it was 98 degrees and of course i was staying in this big german style chalet with no air conditioning uh and so i i got back from dinner after dark and i opened the window and it was hotter outside than it was inside you just i like you said i one here's one tip ask for a fan as soon as you check in because a lot of uh hotels in europe don't necessarily have a fan for every room a lot of them aren't very well air conditioned or air conditioned at all so kind of anticipate your needs because if you go down to the desk at 11 o'clock at night they might say yeah we already gave away all our fans for tonight so i traveled through that heat wave i was in innsbruck and i was in Verona and I was in Bolzano when it was almost 100 degrees. Places are not set up for heat. My wife was with me. We were looking for one time in Innsbruck. We were really hot because we went out and about and we were looking for a restaurant with air conditioning. And the internet was no help. AI, nothing we looked at could tell us which restaurants were actually air conditioned. So we just kind of walked around until we found a place. It was probably the 10th place we checked actually had air conditioning inside just to get a break. So that's another, I think, tip. If you're they're in a heat wave kind of anticipate your need to cool off from time to time figure out a way to look for ac when i was in london with my wife several years ago they had the hottest day on record and i remember we just got it was the same time yeah yeah it's and i remember when we were there here's what i remember we were on the tube and we couldn't believe how hot it was and we saw it later that day on the news that the temperature of the tube was hotter than the temperature legally required to transport cattle and trains in other words you couldn't put cows on the tube it would have been illegal but they were passengers so what we did was we we figured out starbucks we would never we're from seattle we would never go to a starbucks traveling but we figured out starbucks reliably had strong air conditioning so we would kind of honestly we plan our sightseeing and say okay there's a starbucks we can go here and here and then there's a starbucks so we could go and sit in the AC for 15 minutes before we went back out. So you have to kind of triangulate around the fact that Europe isn't really set up for the hot weather. Which is absolutely true, because if you looked at the UK this year, we had no rain for about two and a half months. I remember sending a picture to Mark saying, Mark, this is our field. It's actually completely brown. There's no greenness to it whatsoever. And Mark was like, are you sure that's not sand? I was like, I'm 100% sure this is grass. We did an episode actually recently about coolcation. there's it's a big trend at the moment and publications are writing about it and destinations that many people wouldn't go to necessarily are people are starting to think about those for the next year so places like in scandinavia the baltics so in your opinion is this going to be a trend going forward is that something that you guys are looking at for the next year and the year after that absolutely i mean i think this isn't going to change extreme weather is just going to be getting worse and we're talking about heat waves you can also get flooding you can get all sorts of problems. So I think, first of all, there's a philosophical adjustment you have to make. Again, it's sort of an attitude adjustment. When you plan travel, I think sometimes we forget that anytime you plan a trip, you have to be flexible. You never know what's going to happen. I think now more than ever, especially with weather, you have to be ready to pivot if something wild happens. My wife and I are used to that because we travel so much, but I encounter people who haven't traveled as much and they kind of say, well, we have to go to this place because we have a reservation and a few years ago we were going to New Zealand uh and we were supposed to land exactly when this horrible cyclone was about to hit and so we changed our plans to go to Sydney instead and we waited out the storm in Sydney for two days and then we went to New Zealand to resume our trip and some of our friends and relatives thought it was crazy like you're going that far how could you change plans at the last minute we said we don't want to be arriving in the middle of a cyclone you know you have to make that change your plans but what you're asking too is another good strategy is you can never predict all of it but trying to time your trip to avoid it uh either going off season or going to cooler places when it's hot when i was in Norway a couple years ago I kept noticing there were so many Italian and Spanish tourists and it's because they were on vacations, they were taking, they're escaping Spain and Italy in August to go to Norway and it was pretty cool in Norway, it was very nice in terms of the timing, off season is great but it's really delicate. We are looking at our tours at my company because we have guidebooks, we also have guided tours and we've for many years already been looking carefully at our tours and some tours it's possible to push into the into the shoulder season into the off season and we find some people actually prefer that. Now there's the problem is there's pros and cons when you're going off season hours, well daylight hours are shorter, the weather is more iffy or sometimes much colder, uh you have to kind of expect some sites are going to be shorter hours or closed, especially in very seasonal destinations. I keep talking about Croatia and Greece. If you're on a little Greek island or a Croatian island in November, you might find almost everything is closed. The weather's great, but don't expect to have your pick of restaurants. So we're always trying to adjust kind of where are the places that we can realistically stretch the season for those who want to have a higher chance of avoiding the worst of the heat. And in a few places, we've actually adjusted for the ones that are at the fringes of the season, we will change one of the destinations, so instead of going to a remote island where the ferries aren't going to be running as much we'll find a place on the mainland that's a little bigger that's more likely to actually be open and easier to get to, so yeah we, that's just part of our thinking now that with this extreme weather we're all going to have to kind of shift the way we, we plan our trips, yeah, with the extreme weather and how people are doing like and you mentioned shoulder season, the off seasons, yeah that's one thing I was recommending, like you said, hey if you don't have kids in school you can save I mean, you can save quite a bit of money just going a few weeks off because, I mean, we usually do like a 10-day trip in October to Ireland or France and from Chicago with tickets for $450, which in the summer, I mean, this was a few years, a couple years ago, but in the summer, those same tickets were like $1,500. I mean, that's where you make those adjustments because a lot of that changed the mentality. It's like, look, your summer vacation doesn't have to be in July. Like, you can take it at other times. And I think once people kind of accept that, like, I'm a college professor in my day job. and so I tell my students like look when you go to work take a vacation in October late September or late April or May if you want to go to Europe because you get great weather great stuff and you can save yourself a grand just on your flight let alone the hotels no like but we're supposed to take summer vacation summer I'm like no you're taking vacation and you want to go when you can and enjoy that and enjoy the AC of the U.S. that all those tourists that came here for the World Cup this summer ended up falling in love with but like last little thing anything else you want to put on in there about shoulder season versus off-season travel because you kind of hit most the main stuff we want to talk about with you know when you go and and these kind of things there's anything else you want to add about that the kind of shoulder season advice yeah again I would just say like you said exactly right uh if you have flexibility consider going to Italy instead of in July or in even September September in October November my wife and I and her family several years ago one of our favorite trips we went to Tuscany we have a favorite agriturismo outside of Pienza, and they had a special program knowing that Americans love Thanksgiving. So even though Italy doesn't have Thanksgiving, they did a Thanksgiving week thing for all of their American guests. Oh my God, Thanksgiving was a perfect time to be in Tuscany. Now, it wasn't balmy, it's not tropical, but it was much milder. We had relatives coming in from Seattle and from Ohio and from Boston. Compared to those places in November, Italy felt very great pleasant. It was summer. It was gorgeous. And they were in Ohio, I guarantee they had shorts on. that's right that's right and it was um you know like the wheat fields we thought everything would be brown and kind of dead but they had winter wheat they had crops of winter wheat so actually the fields were greener than when you go in september because in september everything's kind of burned out but there's a new crop coming in in the winter and everything was empty and the like you said the prices i think that's the other thing to keep in mind airfares are cheaper accommodations are much cheaper because it tells you that some of the prices that are going up are sort of accommodations choosing to price a little higher for the high season but again especially in a more seasonal place like italy or greece or croatia if they'll they'll hand me the price list sometimes when i'm updating the book and it's like this room is 500 euros in july and august it's 400 euros in september and it's 100 euros in november if they're open for the winter literally it can be a fraction the cost if you go off season again you have shorter days it might be a little chilly, you might get more rain, but you also avoid the crowds and the heat of the peak of summer. So I think just being a little bit more savvy about that when you're planning trips and not just assuming you have to go when everyone else goes and that you have to go to the same places that everyone else goes. Well, thank you so much, Cameron. This has been amazing. It's so nice to hear you and see you and put a face with the name. I'm sure you look the same as when you wrote this back in the day, just like I used it 27 years ago, but I really appreciate being on here. So, I mean, everyone knows Rick Steves, but can you tell them where they can find you and they can find some of your guidebooks and some of the ones you wrote so that they can know, hey, I got that guy's book. Yeah, I work with 100 wonderful travelers in the Seattle area. The company is called Rick Steves Europe. A lot of us know us from Rick's National Public Television Show and radio show, but we also do these bestselling guidebooks. We also have guided tours. And, boy, I love working. You get to do this as well. I love working with other travelers because, boy, the water cooler conversations are really fun, really inspiring. And I think you said it best at the beginning. I love your content, too. I've been a fan for years. And we have the same mission. Yeah, but we have the same mission, which is demystifying travel, making travel accessible, making it affordable, helping people know what to believe and what not to believe. there's so much travel content out there and some of it's good and some of it's terrible and it's really hard to judge and so our job is to help curate all of that information help people navigate it understand how to be a smarter traveler how to have fun how to be strategic and uh i think we're right in sync on that so that's and the website you can just look up rick steves but our website is ricksteves.com to learn more about what we do yeah and they have fantastic stuff i mean i've got a whole shelf of them that legit stuff my mom has probably three shelves of them uh so she she loved the whole season the whole team does a great job and i always tell people if you ever go to a destination and you're not sure if you want to get if you want to get a local guide their guides i recommend every time best guides local guides you can get i recommend them every time look get the book look in the back they have suggestions there but again cameron thank you so much hopefully i can see you again one day absolutely anytime thank you mark and steves yeah appreciate your time thank you so much so that was awesome i mean it's funny i didn't know this was Cameron's like first like big book. Like, cause I'm like, wow, finally seeing him here. And then he's like, I mean, you can see the smile that, that just made my, that made my day. Cameron, you watch this in the replay, made my day. No, it made your day to show you this old school one here. So that, that was awesome. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. So Chez, what else do we have? Cameron, thank you for coming on the vast knowledge experience as well. It's great to have someone like him on the, on the show, but just before we finish, yeah, we always finish off on our viewers questions or viewers thoughts. So we did an episode and as, as we obviously alluded to it's been a couple of months that we've been on the road etc which is good because we have more information to give you as well as we've been on the road yet but so we did have a couple of things from the last episode which was about the cool vacations and we had something from Piccolo 99 and as we did talk about the extreme weather and we did talk about the extreme weather with Cameron I can't believe he didn't mention Canada as a cool destination even once central Canada can get quite hot too but the coasts are great I've been to the Maritimes in the summer eight times for multiple weeks at time last in 2023 and the weather is perfect every single time so yes we I think that did elude us didn't it Mark and we were talking about also stuff but we did lose it yeah because we're talking about cool vacations we were focusing mostly on Europe and then I had just done one cool vacations in the United States like I just did an interview with that so that's what I was kind of thinking of obviously Canada makes a fantastic option if like Prince Edward Island really nice up there if you go to Nova Scotia you have a good time there and the coolness is true so Piccolo 99 you were right we were wrong that we did not mention it so it is definitely one that i would definitely highly highlight highly highlights as we i think we mentioned maine and it's just right there steven r is one of your one of our members as well so thank you for subscribing to the channel and also being a patreon or a member of the youtube channel itself so we really do appreciate your you being there but he's put down here that So Stephen R115 has said, and I didn't even think about this as an option at all because I think of Hawaii and I think it's hot. But he's actually put down here, Hawaii is a great option. Warm to cool depending on the island and where you are. Up the mountains, along the shore, desire rain on Oahu. Drive across the island, eight miles, feel rain and cool beaches. And as it gets towards sunset, the perfect Hawaiian dusk. It worked for Hawaiian tourism because that was smooth. That was smooth, Stephen. hawaii on your list why was not on my list like that was one of the things because i think when people think cool location automatically they're thinking of like cooler destinations in terms of temperature anyway so telling people like hey hawaii could be one i mean i don't know it could be like that for your mind like what what like i'm trying i'm putting together a thing on like winter travel and good winter destinations and there's good winter destinations for like enjoying winter stuff but there's also good winter destinations if you don't want to freeze your behind off to go to you know so it's like figuring those things out sometimes your brain has to think i think winter destination i think snow and it's got to be cold wait no sometimes winter destination means i don't want to be that and therefore your mind doesn't think that way so Stephen thank you for the input uh for Hawaii for a cool occasion so uh maybe we'll have to do that next summer we do appreciate you putting those questions and thoughts and please do leave comments for this episode because we've just had Cameron on the show and i'm sure you've all got comments and you've got questions because what we'll do we'll try and bring Cameron back if he would like to come back and do me a favor if you have had Rick Steves book look and see if Cameron is one of the authors in there and put it down in there is that you have the Croatia's Rick Steves book or the Central Europe or East Europe back in the day put it down the comments below so he'll know that hey he got he impacted a lot of people with his writing so I think it's really cool because I mean literally those are books those are these are literally books from my shelf you can go back for a decade i mean two decades on this one it's been there we've been using them so a lot of good stuff in here and uh good time so uh thanks to Cameron and thanks to everyone to see you again my friend any uh any cool trips for you coming up or i think i might have a couple of things before the before the year is up but i like to keep it quiet so people follow me on socials would be able to see exactly where i am so do follow me on social media which is at Steve the Wanderer. And for you, Mark, it is at Walter's World pretty much everywhere across the board. So wish you all fantastic next month until next podcast. The next podcast, we won't tell you what it is, but it will bring music to your ears and all kinds of fun stuff. So we'll say bye from this month's Honest Travel Podcast. Bye.