The Rick Steves Effect

We've used the Rick Steves set of guide books to set up most of our trip. He really hasn't led us wrong - the hotels and experiences have been genuine and mostly divergent from those of the huge tour groups. However, we've run into the "Rick Steves effect", where we run into some of the same people at each of our stops. I had a long talk with a fellow on sabbatical who is taking his family of 5 on a 12 week tour of Europe. We'd run into them at our last hotel, they were staying at this hotel, and we'll run into them again Friday night. They also have hit nearly every sight that we have from Normandy down here. It's not so much that choices are so limited, it's that when you want to do France by driving with kids in a given direction, there are certain set of things that make sense to see, and a certain pace of travel that works, and certain hotels that work best with families (especially when you have more than 4 people, which is more of a special case than you'd imagine). In talking to him though, it was almost eerie how our approach to trip planning and priorities was nearly identical. It even turned out that their 10 year old daughter was reading the same book - The Diary of Anne Frank - that Sophie was.

It's also sort of funny when you sit down at a restaurant and half the people there are clutching their blue Rick Steves guides (including yours truly). The most vivid example of this was a tiny restaurant in Paris he recommended. There were 5 tables total in this place. We walked in and were the first people seated. In the next half hour, every other table was filled, with Americans, with their Rick Steves books. The difference he can make for a small hotel or restaurant is incredible. The owner of on the hotels described the Steves recommendation as " a miracle" that drove the majority of their business.