Watch with Rick Steves — Paris with Steve Smith

[Music] hello everybody and welcome to monday night travel with rick steves europe my name is gabe gunning and i have the privilege of serving as your moderator this evening as we pop across the pond to paris with rick and a very special guest tonight now without further ado i would like to turn things over to one of our tour guides for the evening rick steves rick over to you gabe thank you so much and welcome to everybody to monday night travel this is the 60th time we've gathered and i'm loving it more than ever this is something i really look forward to i hope you do too this is a chance for travelers to enthuse about their love of travel specifically their love of european travel so thank you for joining us thank you so much for joining us i hope you've got your favorite travel partner with you hope you got something culturally appropriate to eat and drink i'm going to be enjoying some beautiful wine maddox i just it just makes my endorphins do flip-flops i'll tell you and i've got a beautiful um plate a charcuterie plate here jumping right into the food but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna eat this until i introduce steve smith he's coming in a minute but right now i just want to welcome you i'm in a good mood because this morning i was in minneapolis just flew home today i just had a beautiful weekend um hosting a concert with the mini app with minnesota orchestra we did the symphonic journey we were celebrating seven different wonderful wonderful pieces from all around europe two full houses it was just like the old days standing on stage with the orchestra and a big crowd celebrating the culture of europe i'm happy because of that i'm happy because people are starting to travel again as uh you know we've been we've got 100 people on our staff and we've been you know waiting for the chance to go back to europe for two years now and last week we sent over two weeks ago we sent over our first tours two let's see what is it three have been completed and had a great time we got five tours on the road right now one of my favorite things the last couple of weeks has been to call europe for to talk to the guides and the tour groups when they have their welcome dinner wherever they are in europe and i'll tell you people are happy to be back on the road hey we're celebrating europe i'm heading over there in three weeks gonna be going to paris where we're going right now and we're going to meet steve smith in just a minute but before we do i want to join um our good friend arno savignon who's one of our guides that steve and i both know and uh um enjoy traveling with while we're in france and uh arnold's gonna take me to lunch and i asked our good parisian friend arno to uh help me eat through all the cliches of french cuisine we're gonna go to lunch right now and arnold kind of rolled his eyes because you don't need a lot of this stuff during the summer but we're gonna just do it for the sake of the education join me now in paris with our no as we eat our way through a menu of classic dishes i'm taking our note to lunch against his advice i'm eating all the parisian cuisine cliches in one meal this is the care no good civilized way to start a meal so the apparent teeth tell me about the upper teeth is to open your appetite [Music] it looks very nice so this is the first course yes this is the entree and actually you guys call the entry the main course when the entry is the starter in france that makes it confusing okay i have my escargo and i just use this i know yes so you stab it yes and you twist it out oh look at this out eventually it's very chewy you will see oh that's good it's good huh garlic you know a lot of tourists don't want the escargot but i love it what is the history of the onion soup ah the indian soup is something you eat more in the wintertime because you know it was to warm up the employees of the central markets i eat the onion soup all the year i know but you guys americans are eating everything and all year round let's see i think this is actually the main course clapton we're going to be in french flat princely park okay the principal plate absolutely yes okay steak tartare like that yes yes you don't know what it's made of no it's fresh grilled beef this is raw beef beef very fresh the spice comes from the water sauce the ketchup the mustard the tabasco salt pepper and the yogurt of an egg and then you just mix that all together with the beans do you like it yes i love it you've introduced me to something new this one is so good i can't believe it i'm eating raw beef and it tastes good it is good huh wow especially with some red wine by the way that steak sartar is really tasty but for me it's too rich for a whole plate i mean a typical parisian would just have a whole plate i would highly recommend sharing a plate or ordering a small plate as an aside but don't miss an opportunity while you're in france to try that notorious but surprisingly good steak tartare so we are you know having now the cheese course which is very important you don't end up a meal without some cheese and basically you know you order cheese to finish the wine and then you order more wine to fizz the cheese it's a nice circle oh it's a vicious circle ah this is dessert time rake you're having creme brulee and i have a photo chocolate this is sacred you know for lunch time to stop for at least an hour we don't work look at these people they've been here forever yeah it's sacred illinois okay i know is valiantly trying to get me to slow down at lunch time arno knows how to work hard but at lunch as he said you must take an hour off and when we're filming if the light is good we don't take an hour off and arnold was with us here filming but he just tries and tries to get me to slow down one thing i just love when i'm making the tv is to capture natural sound you know the sound of a spoon crashing through the crust the beautiful crust of a cream caramel [Music] so the coffee always comes after all of the food after the dessert always what if you ask for your coffee with the meal they would say yes sure but it would come after the meal they don't want to be rude okay what a meal no excellent wasn't it i'm heading for the horse day gallery oh okay go ahead i'm finishing my cognac bye-bye rick okay we're going to meet steve in a minute but i just want to remind you steve smith is the man that really um built our tour program as far as gathering our guides and nurturing our core of guides we've got over 100 guides mostly europeans that just are so amazing steve retired from that work a couple years ago we had a hundred of our guides right here in my living room and i want to show you this little clip before i introduce steve one of our guides is kathy ryan she's an irish woman who's a great singer we always encourage our guides to to play to your strengths if you're a beautiful singer weave music into your tour and kathy here is singing a special irish um thank you sort of song to steve for his career building our team of guides you'll find when you look at these guides nearly all of them still work with us and it's just the kind of caliber the camaraderie the spree decor that we enjoy with our guides that lead our rick steves tours here we are gathered in my living room wishing thanking steve for all of his work and bidding him well [Music] fate will take me where it will but through the valleys and over mountains i will not forget but remember you still and our time together we all share with you [Music] our time [Music] oh yeah hey steve smith thanks for joining us come on out that's a heck of an introduction i rick thank you boy what a memory wow remember that evening wasn't that a touching moment how could i forget it yeah yeah and you know it's 25 years of doing that you know i remember when there were four of us guiding tours four that's right dave and mike and uh yeah we'd have a guide workshop around a dinner table no i think there's 150 or something in it it's just thrilling to have had that luck to be part of building such a cool company you know all of our tour members are thankful for the guides uh i'm thankful for the guides and you can bet the guides are thankful to be able to do work where they get to um like i say about public television respect the intellect of their travelers assume an attention span and don't not worry about selling them stuff but worry about just turning them onto the culture it's such a it's such a blessing to be able to guide with those kind of values and and that's the team you assembled i'm just so thankful for that they love it because we allowed them to really teach and to be themselves we didn't constrict how they did things that a lot of uh uh leeway and how they led their tours that that draws good talent a lot of them you know just to pay their rent they had to do uh tourists with other companies and with cruise ships and so on with a different style of guiding let's just put it that way people who want to be um teachers on the road and inspire people to really get into the culture oh my goodness what an amazing team we've got and all of them really have been stuck on hold for two years and just this month there's this positive hopeful time where it looks like we're going to be back back on the on the bus it's so exciting yeah i yep you can just feel it everybody yeah and you're you're going to be heading over when are you going to europe now about eight days i'm out for two months plus yeah to paris i go all right it's time and i am ready um i gotta say you've uh you've basically uh spearheaded the writing um written the line share this this 1200 page book 1200 pages and you've got to check literally all of the information in here has to be checked and you've got your assistance in france but it's pretty much you and then you and i are going to work together on the paris book and this really is a labor of love and it is so exciting the work that we've got in store for us i'm going to join you there in about a month and right now we're going to travel around france and paris with our monday night uh travel crowd i want to run this little um clip right now and it's in carcassonne and it's an example of the kind of restaurant that both you and i celebrate when we find a place so here we're dropping into a restaurant that really is personality driven and has a specialty and that specialty is escargot check this out [Music] i'm rick steves and i'm having a good time in uh carcassonne in france and uh i'm with steve smith and steve and i were checking out all of the restaurants in our book and the food here was so good that i ate it before i could film it but the challenge for me and steve is to find a place that has character i mean this is a little place where as usual you're really lost in the hubbub i mean you are surrounded by the energy of this place the owner is named thomas and he's there he's working harder than anybody and um and he's got his personality he puts little anna's in the escargot no no no and thomas this is just fantastic merci bean what was it what was in the uh escargot the special flavor of the escargot but uh [Music] you can get escargot anywhere in france but you can only get thomas's escargot at escargot in carcassonne that's very good but we're trying to write these up and this is our bugaboo you can write in a rest you know in a guidebook but then you try to make it so people can from their hotel bed be sitting there wondering where am i going to go for dinner tonight well complete flexibility you've got a vision of the hands-on management of thomas and his gang of black shirted staff the sizzle of the open kitchen surrounded by a foodie capsule under medieval timbers and the tourists and the tourists feel just like locals so this is the challenge in every city to find these kind of places and put it in our guidebook so our travelers can learn from our adventures and be better and have a better trip happy travels from carcassonne and france oh steve steve that is such hard work somebody's got to do it somebody's got to do it actually that's after a long day of checking things out visiting all the restaurants and we normally when we have dinner together it's pretty late at night because we've uh we pretty much spent the prime time looking at restaurants when they're thriving to assess them right well you you don't get to see them every year you come by once a year and you do a different section of france every year and after a few years you're caught up so i get to sort of show you the hit parade and you pick out the one that interests you the most and it's always a surprise to me which one you choose to go back to to actually have dinner in at the end it's kind of a ritual for us isn't it about nine o'clock you and i have a little huddle to go okay we've looked at 10 restaurants tonight which i mean we literally hit 10 restaurants in an evening and a couple easily for three hours and then we go and you always ask me which one i want to go to and then we call them up and if they're still open we'll be right there service whatever you want and it's just great hey speaking of food i forgot to mention our food or drink for the evening ah you know me when i go to a restaurant in france when i'm with you madok m-e-d-o-c that's an important word that's what i'm drinking what are you drinking tonight steve i have a glass of champagne oh nice from real champagne from the north of france roederer r-o-e-d-e-r-e-r because i'm celebrating my first trip to france in a couple years and the return to what i love to do and what we help people do to be somewhere else and see their own country in part through other people's eyes and just to enjoy where they are now steve you've got a place in board in burgundy and that's famous for the wine and this is bordeaux and that's sort of the enemy there with that wine this is down by uh basque country in this in the south it's close yeah it's south aboard the city of bordeaux the wine region southwest of france and east southeast of france i'm not hot on that area for sightseeing but i'm very hot in that area for the wine oh it's good value they make a lot so there's vastly more vineyards there than in burgundy so the wine is going to be a little bit less it depends naturally on the wine but generally you can get a lot more good value like the madoka that you're drinking is a great value almost anywhere yeah because i like to i end up going for for the um kind of the poor man's brunello you know in italy space so much for the famous wine but you can find the no no no vino nobile montipulciano you know that's in the same category but it's not quite as famous and this madoka is a good solid bed i think though they'll see on the show but they um americans are often surprised how reasonable wines are in france particularly by the glass in a restaurant or cafe and the table wines in restaurants fifteen to twenty dollars are perfectly good and you drink the wine in the region you're in right yeah so bordeaux drink that wine if you're in burgundy drink a pinot noir i'm drinking this right here in seattle and i if i if i'm if i if i'm sensing it quickly i get a little hint of blackberry a little current maybe i think licorice mint google my doc you can you can do it all i know steve is this is a good one okay and then i want to share with everybody else this charcuterie uh board i just love to throw together a little um kind of a munchie plate here with my red wine and um you get this in france it's so easy to find a good charcuterie and of course you got your you know your your pickles and your vegetables and your nuts and this kind of thing and your fruit but it's the meat and the cheese that i just love to match with the wine and we're going to be seeing a number of cheese courses today and here we've what i'm having is um sort of a kind of the swiss version of amentol and alpine cheese from the savoy uh chamonix area i've got some blue cheese and you know in italy that'd be a garganzola we call it blue cheese but that's roquefort in france and then i've got a chef and this is from leon and this is goat cheese and then a pork pate with black pepper and french sausage what is the word for sausage and french again it's so good and of course some great mustard also if i'm a good boy at the very end i've got a macaroon and my friend sue made this for me a couple of nights ago in minneapolis when i was there sue and david were hiking with me and shelly around mount blanc and i've had several of these and they are really good that's a macaroon so i'm ready for a nice meal um steve right now we're going to go i was talking about a cheese course set this up we're going to amboise and we're going to have a cheese course with aurora well setting it up it's the penultimate dish you know it's before dessert right but it's after the the first couple courses and then you get the cheese course to sort of clean your palate sometimes it's a salad then cheese then dessert at the very end and then coffee after that and this is a small little restaurant that you know the first we were talking before this show rick 30 i think we're on our 32 second or 33rd edition so that many years ago this restaurant has been in the book in a small town that's stability and it's the same owner uh well after a short time and that's a key to a good restaurant in our books you know i'm so impressed by these personality different restaurants i just i i think that's so important and when you do get a chance it's not as popular as it used to be because of it's just not that healthy but a cheese course really is something to jump on if you get a chance and be sure you get a first-class tour of the plate right now we're going to go to amboise on the lower valley and we're going to let aurora introduce us to a classic french cheese course here we go bon appetit hello you have the sensor share the valencia santa monica touring and poulini sampier from local gold cheese after you have some couches this one the petitrol it's from the warasha department very nice village with douglas it's near vanduul montoya it's creamy smile and fine you said you have one cow just one cup okay and then tell me more about over here after you have the blue cheese formed on there the sanitary liquid and mural is from over this one or colonel not pasteurized yeah and this one gathering with garlic and pepper is from all them too with the blue and the salmon can you eat this one first and then and then you made something special here yes and this one robloxian sorry it's from savoy and i prefer almanac reasons in my house it's not my armani with raisins oh yeah and fresh raisins oh so beautiful what is the name of your restaurant and what is the city that we are in today it's a beautiful place thank you very much steve that is just so charming and anybody can have that experience you don't need to write a guidebook to get aurora to give you this loving sort of tour of the great cheeses and then ask for you just get you don't eat all of them you just get a little slice of which ones you point to right yeah i mean the boy that was just a uh what a plate of a lot of foods that you just pick a little bit of or you mean there's no way you can get through a meal and whenever you see you said it earlier it's a good point still today you'll find plateaued homage plateau formage available in certain restaurants on the menu look at the menu it's always posted outside before any restaurant in front before you go in and when you find one of the plateaued homage go a lot of times if you have a multi-course menu and you buy a three-course meal one of the choices for dessert would be the cheese course cheese or dessert exactly no i go i don't really need the dessert i need the cheese and some more red wine and that's a way to the meal a lot of americans are a little nervous about the skin of course if it's got a thick rind on one of these giant wheels of cheese you don't need that skin but i would imagine all the cheeses we just saw there you would be happy to heat the skin as well i'm trying to think through but rarely do i not in france yeah the cheeses are such they're soft cheeses though you eat the rind exactly all right hey let's go now to paris steve and we're going to go to our favorite neighborhood first time i met you in france you were living just a couple of blocks away and you introduced me to route claire we're going to go back to paris travel a little bit in the city and then go to our favorite neighborhood market street rue claire [Music] paris was born over 2000 years ago on this island in the river sand and many of its highlights can be seen from popular sightseeing boats there's the notre dame and the louvre museum and of course the eiffel tower built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the french revolution paris glitters with history even the bridges bestowed on the city by kings and emperors tell a story beyond its glorious monuments and buildings paris is a city simply in love with life delightful parks let commoners luxuriate like aristocrats here in luxembourg gardens there's a tranquility and refined orderliness enjoyed by young and old [Music] hey steve normally this is the situation right you don't go on the grass but in a few cases you can go on the grass what's the deal there yeah you're i tell you what it is it's a funny thing in luxembourg garden there's only one area where you're allowed well one principal area you're allowed on the grass but that varies by who's mayor of the city and there'll be signs and you'll be whistled off they have cops walking around i mean police park cops who are perfectly gentle but they'll let you know with their whistles you're not allowed on that and if there's nobody on the grass don't go on it no somebody told me a joke i think i i forgot about until just now they said what's the definition of a split second the time it takes between when you step on grass in paris and when somebody goes that's very good i like that so but the parks are and you know the parks are a big deal people live in tiny quarters right so they they need the park they do and and paris i mean compared to any city almost in the world has more acreage of park space that for a major urban area per capita than anywhere else and it is a joy of traveling and we we point them out well in our books too and i think people americans are really surprised all those green chairs that you're seeing people sitting on are just left there overnight they're not chained down right that that is your backyard right those people sitting on those chairs that's where they go so don't underestimate the parks we all go to the galleries and museums and the palaces the parks really are worth a serious look the gardens are impeccably tended and for generations children have launched dreams on this pond [Music] establish a foothold in paris i like to choose a neighborhood and make it home strolling market streets like this paris has a small town charm for those learning the fine art of living parisian style market streets like roocler are ideal with the help of my local friend delphine prejean each shop provides an insight into parisian life delphine's planning a dinner party and she's taking us along steve it just occurred to me one fun dimension of your and my work is we get to meet the entrepreneurs that run the restaurants and run the little hotels you and i favor family run hotels uh for instance delphine you've known her or her parents right i mean for for decades they've been in our guidebook because they run a little family hotel yeah she's like my son says our kids age and i knew her when she was a not a baby but a young toddler and watched people grow up and now take the reigns right from their parents it's fun to see it she is she's just like her mother i mean it's their and they treat you anyway they're lovely people the kind of people who would come to seattle to see our office at edmonds to see where all these travelers they get come from where's the you know that's i gotta say not everybody cares about this but the people that we are are um you know excited about recommending are actually excited about the kind of travelers we send to their bed and breakfast or to their cafe and they know that our travelers are curious our travelers want to learn they want to try out things that they're not demanding and they're not noisy we have great travelers and we find great families that run great businesses and it's kind of our magic little juice i think and to meet people and stay with people like delphine it really makes your trip a lot warmer shopping on a street like this is just a delight isn't it it's really nice we're very lucky to be able to to walk on the street and have all these very different shops which are very good for because in america there's one one-stop shopping we go to one big place we have one street shopping here one street shopping like a market street it's a rocket street it is i think for the first course it would be nice to put some shrimps and mayonnaise okay and so you see you have different types of shrimps you have like different colors different sizes as well so we'll i think we'll go for the moyen for the medium ones which is very flavorful it looks very fresh we'll have some meat tonight as a main course and we know the neighbors would butcher you know my mom used to come here and so you can trust the quality of the quality you know you know that they give you advice as well so i'm going to have a ratchet buff and i'm going to have to ask the man for for some tips so what did he say so i said like 25 minutes yeah and for six people uh 1 200 grams 1 200 grams for six big people [Music] so rick a dinner without the cheese course is not complete so we have to go and pick some some cheese i love that a dinner without a cheese course is not complete amen i just hallelujah brother hallelujah you can make a cheese course for lunch we're gonna you can pick out a few of these and then next we're gonna go to the wine shop buy a bottle of wine take your partner down to the park sit on a bench have an unforgettable local lunch before dessert after main course and um we'll have some an assortment of different cheeses so you create a variety yes i create a small plate with different cheese so we'll have some this one looks good some good cheese and some blue yeah some chamomile and some hard cheese good socially i think it is very good because you have more wine a wine more cheese more wine which so once we know what we are eating we are going to choose the wine beautiful shop yes it's really nice we are going to talk with the expert and we're going to tell him what i'm going to have for dinner and he's going to pick the right wines for us that's good in france with so many wines to choose from expert advice is welcome he recommends a white for the shrimp a full-bodied red from the rhone valley for the beef and another white this time from the loire valley for the cheese plate nice to have the advice for the little the little details of the menu in france any good meal comes with fresh bread and that requires a visit to the local boulangerie so we'll have some bread for our dinner no meal without today's bread today's bread yes no fresh no problem no fresh nobody so we'll have some baguettes and we will have some some special bread as well for the cheese oh so some a variety of bread with the cheese course and the final touch flowers for the table it's very bright and they're going to be beautiful on my table it's great [Music] you see i got a i got gotta say after two years uh delphine's family's still in business and most of our favorite restaurants are still in business is that your take yeah it's astonishing yeah that having done the before trip research just to see who's in business 90 percent yeah very little change that way we were worried about that and i was just on route claire a couple months ago and uh the ambience is there i mean you know people when they go inside one might wear probably wear a mask you have to show your qr code or your cdc card to get into the restaurants and so on i had to show my cdc card just to sit outside and have a play the best car going a glass of wine at the cute little uh cafe what was it called cafe bistro right next to hotel levesque such a cute little place that's the diplomat yeah i love that place yeah love it and the ambiance was great petting people's poodles and talking to strangers and sipping that wine river splits the city into the right bank and the left bank its two islands mark the center of the old town most of the essential sites lie near the notre dame between the eiffel tower the latin quarter and montmartre hey dave uh steve i gotta i gotta give a shout out to our favorite map maker dave herline he doesn't get enough credit dave was my first employee way back when i was a student back when i was my twenties i gave a talk at the university of washington i was teaching about travel and he came up after the class and he said quite talk but your maps suck and you know right my maps were ballpoint pen maps and i'm not very artistic and ever since dave has been my map maker he's a great traveler he was one of our most um experienced tour guides he was the generous he could do any tour anywhere in europe but he's the man that's made all the maps in all our books for the last 30 or 40 years and he makes these special maps kind of stripped down real simple for tv but but um isn't it great to have dave making the maps in all of our friends books it sure is i love the hand-drawn aspect and dave is such a good traveler he travels for on his own or as a tour guide and he he takes notes and he comes back and gives me good advice on the maps um and even for the books too yeah so these all these hand-drawn maps i mean now they're they're digitized and so on but they have that hand-drawn coziness and they're good not because necessarily he's a a great he's a great cartographer but there he's his advantages he's been there he's a tour guide he's been to all these places and he understands what's confusing to the traveler and what needs to be highlighted on the map so here's to dave herline there you go happy day oh here's the medoc these highest point the eiffel tower was built in 1889 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the french revolution and to show off at a world's fair it was a muscular symbol of the industrial age to a generation hooked on technology it was the marvel of its day trumpeting progress and man's ingenuity this 900 foot tall tower has three observation levels [Music] the higher you go the more you pay for me the middle level is plenty high thousands of iron bars and millions of rivets all assembled in just over two years [Music] today it stands tall an exclamation point symbolizing the proud independent spirit of the french steve what's your best tip for the eiffel tower well book a reservation you can do it 60 days out and you can do it closer but not beyond 60 days you can do it at 8 30 in the morning paris time france time so figure out that you're wherever you live locally and that's going to save you a lot of time i'd book it late in the day so you could see some time up on the tower and then see it during sunset and if you want to see the top go all the way to the top first and then take your time down to the second level and the first level second level view is the best by far that's right i don't even need to go to the top it's kind of fun to do but it's so g wiz because you can't really see you're so high it's like you're in an airplane yeah it really is it really is too high to see for for taking pictures or anything the view from that second level what about 40 of the way up that really is that's fantastic and you can see all the famous things in in paris and i highly agree with your idea to make a reservation because every time i go i just use our book and make a reservation it's simple and i end up walking by a long line of people waiting in the line for people that are not so smart who didn't make a reservation they're wasting an hour of their day and i walk right up in front they usher me to the front and put me on the next elevator up one thing i love to do steve is to take the stairs down from that second level you'd be surprised how fast you can get down by the stairs and it's just a it's just so interesting if you don't have reservations you can walk up the stairs and usually there's very little line there if you've got it in you to do that's one trick to get around the lines too that and then so get just get to the first floor i think it's 360 steps you can do that and then elevate from there i'd rather take the elevator up and take the stairs make a reservation square across the river is the place to view the tower and to check out a colorful scene parisians own their city in fact twice a week streets are closed and thousands turn out to roll through their city in an exuberant celebration of life [Music] paris was born centuries before christ right here on the ile de la site an island in the middle of the sand river the romans conquered the local fishing tribe and set up camp today the notre dame cathedral marks the place where a roman temple once stood the city's first bishop saint dennis holds his head in his hands when christianity began making converts here the pagan romans beheaded him but according to legend dennis just picked up his head and kept on going inspired by this miracle christianity flourished and the temple was replaced by a church imagine the faith of the people who built this breaking ground in 1163 on a building which wouldn't be finished for 200 years gothic architects incorporated the latest technology flying buttresses to support the heavy rooftop its ghoulish gargoyles multi-task they serve as fancy rain spouts and scare away the evil spirits the church is dedicated to our lady or notre dame mary cradles the baby jesus the rose window provides a majestic halo the virgin mary was highly revered throughout the middle ages the faithful petitioned her in times of trouble for both comfort and through her intervention god's mercy as worshipers headed for mass they'd walk under a relief of judgment day christ sits on his throne the trumpet sounds all are judged peasants knights nobles royals even bishops an angel weighs cute little souls while cheating demons yank on the scales [Music] the saves stand happily at christ's right hand the damned asari chain gang are on his left carvings like that and like this scene of eve tempting adam with an apple remind us that this art was more than decoration you know think about it steve this this was carved 800 years ago think of the investment and think of the passion and the power of the people's faith and to this day 800 years it's just so such a beautiful place to visit of course sadly we've got this tragic fire and it's closed for a while i would imagine it'll be quite a while before it's open again to tourism what's the latest on that steve well you know i'll find out well more when i when i'm there but they the official line is they're going to open some of it for the olympics which is 2024. in fact a lot of paris is trying to would have honestly renovated itself for those olympics for yeah but notre dame would be the the key but the reality is really to be done it's 15 years that's what most people say yeah i'm not sure we'll be able to go inside that's a question it's a huge investment and i'm so thankful that people recognize the value of this is sort of the heart and soul of the city right there ever in the in the place where paris was born way back in roman times these images reinforced the stories people learned in church while the church is dedicated to mary the rest of paris seems dedicated to regular parisians the old center with its two islands in the middle of the sand retains a charming elegance the ile de la cite is laden with historic sites but the little ilsan lui connected by a pedestrian bridge is laden only with the delights of good living [Music] with my parisian friend and fellow tour guide arno cervinia steve i just called arnold a couple of days ago and he was having his welcome dinner with his group and i've made a habit this last 10 days or so to call each of the groups that i can and welcome them and thank them for being the vanguards of tourism again but arno was just having a wonderful time with this group in paris you know these guides you've known him a long time too of course they do their work sure they they're so eager to go back to work because they love what they do sure they can make some money but the government supported i mean european government supported their employees enormously he just loves what he does and he wants to do it let me free to do what i love to do guides are when you read a good guide you just know they're wired to enthuse about their heritage and their culture and their art and their cuisine and their history and so on and arno is a good example of that i'm so thankful to have guides like arnold with our groups taking them all over europe from norway to portugal to greece great island yeah this is the ilsan week i love this place you know all around it's really uniform architecture everything dating from the 17th century and the beautiful apartments very expensive the most expensive in town and i wish i could have an apartment here if i could afford it it's very trendy to live oh my god wonderful and all along the street you've got some galleries queens you know little boutiques and restaurants and just down the street there there's a place bertie where you have the best surveys in paris really yeah [Music] yes the island is charming but the whole city of paris i gotta say that's that's kind of funny this i think this is this is is this cheese this is cheese yes yeah so i'm i'm i would have i i would have said let's get ice cream instead of cheese there but here i'm i'm ice cream cause i'm looking at that bertion ice cream it looks cheesy to me and just down the street there there's a place bertillon where you have the best sorbets in paris really yeah [Music] yes the island is charming but the whole city of paris is charming in fact it faces the river saying and the river zen has been called by parisians the mirror of the city [Music] it's a great people zone yeah you know people's trolling yeah coming up wandering around yes indeed on the bastille day we have a big party here with dancing organizers and people dancing all around the place and today steve this uh in the middle ages this was a mucky sewery riverbank just a horrible place people turned their back on the river and now one of the great things about paris is how they've turned the banks of the sen into like a long skinny park i'm glad you stopped it right there because i was just thinking and that's new to a lot of travelers if you've been to paris before this is rather recent where they took express lanes on either side of the river for automobiles and converted them to a broader sidewalk than you see where you are here i mean this could have been before i'm not sure exactly where you are they're part of an auto road road express lanes right and now it's all pedestrian zone amazing way to go paris and you know drivers say drivers will say hey you're making it slower to get around town and the city government says yeah you're right we are because we're favoring pedestrians and bicyclists and public transit users over drivers yep absolutely this is even the the perry plunge right are they still doing that in the summer the well we'll find out i'm curious if they're going to still do that but that's part of this whole uh plan to to really enliven the river banks in paris and they just do it beautifully so make a point i mean they've got the new loaner or not new but the loaner bike program and you can pick up a bike in one rack and you can bike all along this end to the far end of the town and park the bike there and be on your way it's just so relaxed so what is the french word for these little stalls bookinis we call them it comes from the name book which it's all french okay the old books in old friends all books yes and they sell prints you know and it goes back a long time oh back to the 1600s yes indeed there were no very uh wild vendors which were all on the river saying like that and they had to be regulated in the 19th century but they were so wild it's just a classic parisian there it has the you know kind of bohemian lifestyle ah steve are you ready to get back to paris it's so it's so funny we've been like birds with our wings clipped for two years it's i have to pinch myself that i'm really going to be there for the first time in two years you're right and and i know it's there's going to be some change but i think it's going to be just what i hoped for um i want to take a moment here just to thank you and remind everybody if you're going to france this book steve has been a labor of love for you for 30 years or he said it's in the 30th edition or something like that it's 1200 pages and you are so passionate about france i mean i do all of europe but you are mr france for us and i i wouldn't i'd have such a tough time doing anything in france without your expertise and your love of this beautiful culture this is our comprehensive france book and then a popular alternative is what's called the best of france and it's the all of france but it's it's more colorful with more photos and maps and punchier and a lot of people like that style of information and then of course we have the same sort of thing for paris the comprehensive paris which would be you know uh just lots and lots of information and maps and little black and white photos or the pocket guide which is a little more um select of information and much more colorful and easy to put in your pocket so you've got a big responsibility and you're going to be spending uh quite a bit of time this spring along with all of our other researchers it's all hands on deck our bill newland our publisher is flying up next friday and we're going to have a huddle and we're ready to get those books back in the stores and people are ready to travel and we are determined to get our books post-covered as soon as is physically possible and that should be by the end of this year i'm ready sign me up sign me up and have some i want to shout out to virginia moray who you know i couldn't do these books without her help i mean um my collaborates as the french call her helps me update those books i couldn't do it alone uh anybody who watched our show on the french alps we finished that off in lyon i think virginia lives in right and she was just great there hey now it's time to go out oh first of all i want to uh just thank uh our staff we couldn't do monday night travel without our wonderful crew we've got we've got lisa and we've got gabe working tonight juliana's on our crew and i'm just so thankful for the work that they do i want to remind people i'm going to be going to europe in three weeks i've got two more weeks of monday night travel before i'm gone for a couple of months next week i'm meeting with alfio right here and we're talking about sicily and after that i'm going to go to germany with everybody i love sharing germany and after that i'm going to turn it over to ben to gabe and lisa and julianne and those guys are going to be getting guests and putting it together and it's just going to be great my hunch is people are curious how much i'm going to be doing this this is the 60th edition of this monday night travel right now the 60th and i'm probably going to host one a month and i'm going to be tuning in to the others i do want to remind you all of the monday night travels we've ever done you can watch them anytime they're archived you can binge watch it in in three days that's 60 hours i think you might want to take a little break but there's a lot of good material there you could page through that but remember we're going to be going every monday for the foreseeable future and i've got two more editions next week is sicily and after that is germany we're going to have questions with steve in just a few minutes after the rest of the video and if you look at the q a widget that's where you put in your questions and then gabe will be lobbing them over to steve and me during the question and answer session and if you look at the chat widget that's where we put links to tonight's show for example we've got connections to the people that you see in the show if you want to get more information about them we've got uh connections to our guidebook and just this last month condensed asked me to write an article a romantic article about paris and i wrote an article called a double date with paris and it was such a fun article to write and we've got a link straight to condensed where you can read that article if you'd like to in the chat section there so thank you again for joining us on monday night travel and right now we're going to go out of the center of town to la defense and steve it just occurs to me that it's really important when you do go to europe not just to stay in the historic core but make a little side trip and spend a few hours where the local people actually work and shop and live and uh that would not be on the ill daily site no i mean well it depends yeah i mean there is some employment there but mostly that's residential let's see yeah but where we're going is where i think something like 80 000 people work all right let's check this out this is la defense if you take the subway out to the no the ark to triumph stay in the subway for 10 more minutes then pass the arctic triumph and go to the arc of la defense you'll see that arch it's so big you could put the arc to triumph inside of it check this out a lot of fun for a stark contrast in glass head out to la defense a forest of skyscrapers nicknamed paris's petite manhattan so often we travelers only hang out in the historic old quarters of europe's great cities to see the contemporary side of paris a celebration of modern commerce hop on the metro and visit la defense [Music] with its striking architecture 150 000 people a day commuting here to work and even more to shop and play it's the engine of a modern day economic power stroll the esplanade the glassy buildings which house shopping malls with hundreds of stores convention centers and towering corporate headquarters playfully compete for your attention with the social ethic embraced by french society getting a building permit often comes with a requirement to fund public art that's why the la defense esplanade is like an open-air modern art gallery sporting pieces that make going to work just a little more fun legrand arch inaugurated in 1989 on the 200th anniversary of the french revolution is the centerpiece of this ambitious complex the arch is big notre dame cathedral could fit under it thousands of people work in its 35 stories and as everywhere here the architecture is people friendly back in the old center it's time for a little shopping paris is a leader in the fashion world famous for its high-end design my parisian friend delphine prejean is showing me how even window shopping some of paris's many fine boutiques can be a cultural experience these windows they put so much energy into their windows yes they have to because we you know like shopping is a national sport in france and we call it legend so legends means window leaking window window licking let's be trained leave it to the french to come up with a very colorful way to describe window shopping very good see all these different details that they put on the window it's very bright very colorful very appetizing you could say yeah it has to be very appetizing yes there are a lot of sales yes this is a typical period in july to get sales in paris but the trap is that when you go inside you always finish by buying the new collection because they put the new collection just beside you always buy something from the new collection at full price this is my so the sale catches you inside yeah they just find the new collection yes department stores were invented in paris these venerable institutions beautiful monuments to fine living offer a chance to check out what's in vogue the gallery lafayette is a classic example its bell epoch dome dates to 1912 and shoppers are welcome to catch their breath or perhaps have it taken away on the store's rooftop where a grand city view awaits [Music] it's kind of fun steve to recommend these free viewpoints isn't it like on the top of a department store there's a lot in paris we talked about the parks before that is free it's astonishing um it's really a good value city to sightseeing because if you buy one of the museum passes that makes the sites affordable and and then you splice in i mean the gallery lafayette is a site in and of itself it was built at the same time as the opera house next door it feels like you're in the opera house shopping for your clothes or your pear pants or whatever and the views there's by the way i meant to to tell you this before when i saw you the samaritan department store is now open again after 15 years of being closed and that one has a has its old view back right on top of notre dame i cannot wait to see that okay now we're going to take a little side trip out to um a castle that was the inspiration of versailles a chateau that made louis xiv kind of envious and he made sure to build a pat a chateau that was bigger but not more graceful than volleyball i'm rick steves we're driving through the countryside of france and i'm with my buddy steve smith and he's the co-author of the best france book in the english language steve tell us about these trees well great i'm gonna address these trees are plane trees and they're planted close to the road in fact in the days before cars were invented and today they're posing a problem for drivers and they are cutting them down on one side to widen roads because of the accidents cars get bigger and the trees get bigger so it's just it's the big squeeze but who planted them and why well i think they were planted by napoleon's good gardener friends so that his armies would have shea de marchander on their long treks across europe so napoleon had a heart of gold when it came to helping his soldiers hike in the shade so they say now these plane trees are all over france what's they provide a lot of shade or what's the deal oh look at this we're going to the volleyball volleyball this is the chateau that was so beautiful that what's the tour guide story when napo when louis xiv saw this he he uh killed the architect or something like that put him in jail put him in jail because he wanted a palace that's beautiful look at that steve look at that ja it is literally jaw-dropping now we all think of going to the loire valley for chateau and i just think that's a great idea we love the lower valley but if you want a side trip out from paris there are several chateaus of course we know about versailles and if remember you can always all of these little clips this is just a little um a quick iphone kind of facebook clip i'm doing here but you can go to classroom europe and search for these things on my website and get right to that clip but steve if you wanted to go out to see some chateau from paris what are the top three or four chateaus you might visit just an hour away from town well for versailles number one but that's almost feels like an obligation right this is the one i would choose to go back to time and again beau liby combs is number one in my mind nearby fontainebleau works well and it's it's very different in terms of era when it was constructed and there's a big city around it or a city a small city and then there's shanti chantilly is how we'd pronounce it that's chantilly those windows we know this this castle we're looking right here fontaine funtime blue right no no i say no that's right bowling okay that's just classic chateau volley become it is hontan blue is as you said a different era and it's great for napoleon if you're interested in napoleon right i love it right and you can do them both in a day you can do both this one and then because they're close to each other that they make a great combination sorry and then chantilly yeah ye that's a good one also if you love courses if you like if you like reflecting ponds it's it's they're all so different that's the i mean you just need a lot of time to day trip from paris there's so much okay now we're gonna see i think two or three clips right here they're a little bit they're just candid after a long day of work you and i've been working we've been visiting 10 or 12 restaurants in the evening we're just very happy i'm usually in my mind done working and just in a great mood i'm a little bit drunk and so forgive me for that but i just want to show you these clips because it shows kind of the fun that steve and i have when we're researching and the the gems that that we try to find and we're so thankful to uncover when we do uh right now we're going to go to a restaurant we we discovered for our book in normandy and the conviviality here is just amazing when we found this place remember steve it was the uh like the local pizza place but it's a tartan or something just outside of paris thank you steve there it is right there what's this called that's a tartine partin so this is the local specialty it's right in this beautiful small town in normandy and it is i mean the food's fine but the ambiance is great i'm rick steves and i'm with my friend steve smith we're just finishing up show me that book we're finishing up a great 10 days of research in this brand's book and we're doing friends 2017 right now but we've just discovered this um amazing restaurant and this restaurant i just i just absolutely love this place and steve and i were walking around we got a local tip and it's right next to a boring pizzeria and we popped in and this is where this is where everybody knows your name [Laughter] everybody knows your name the wine is like wow hello and this is my friend from brittany and here very good very good yeah and when you went to new york what were the people like in new york the people in new york yes what was they i'm telling you if you look around and you find a fun place it's less expensive and it's a big memory and that's what this is this is a tartin is that what is the tartine it's an open-faced sandwich kind of so this is the remains of my tartin right here it was three times as big and that was our dinner travels from brittany we're in dinan boswell i'm rick steves and i've just had the most of them i think that i swear the most amazing night and it's just there's there's no food to show you right now there's just an empty neighborhood steve smith our normandy book and an empty bottle of hope i can promote a book even when i'm uh three sheets to the window there's there's my one steve what it started off with um a little little tiny appetizer of uh some sort of a beautiful cod little tiny thing and then we have this some kind of god a little tiny thing [Music] h i n g yeah there's a word there's a fun word in in uh in french this and that what is that you taught me once what is this and that but i'm not sure i've got the right reference you want oh well a little tiny thing the thing amazing gourmand which is with the soft meats with the foie gras and the in the nice duck liver and then i had some beef with um uh lard oh and then you see that burma wow look at the in the palm oh that's nice [Laughter] and then we had a cheese course and the cheese course with the bread and with the medoc wine it is so fundamental it is just fundamental we're in normandy here and this is the land of the three seas which is four seas there's crepes there's cantaloupe no cream and there's calvados cider and cider and you can and there's the calvados comes from apples it's apple brand yeah it's so decided and there's there's some there's an apple down there somewhere i think yeah so we're just having a good time and i'm telling you i'm telling you france is a great place in fact there's some canadians down there hey canadians what do you think about french food love it love french food [Applause] so just enjoy your travels and i hope france is part of it you know i there's a there's a kind of a lesson there to be having dinner at 10 o'clock at night there is it it's quieter and um and it's fun to sort of shut the place down by the way i'm reminded of two things rick one that meal was 28 euros just a few years ago it wasn't long ago when we were there yeah i've eaten a few restaurants in seattle lately and and wow what a deal that is uh because it's tax and tip included we talked about that a little bit before um you can tip up a little bit if you want as um but also um it is linda you mentioned in the her name's in the book whenever we put somebody's name in the book you know we have a you should feel really welcome at that place don't you think yeah and and you know we have confidence that linda will be there next year because in in europe people are they find their niche and they they do it you know and uh it's there's these i keep saying personality different restaurants it's you know and a great thing is especially to get out of the big city when you're in a small town that's where you want to be sure you have a special meal because you can go to a better restaurant and order high on the menu in a small town and i think get twice the value yeah i'm a big fan of cafes in paris and nice restaurants and intimate restaurants in the countryside and in principle perfect yeah that that's a great idea and we'll see if we can disprove that when we're in paris together next year let's go back to paris it's time for the revolution okay the latin quarter is the core of the left bank as the south side of the seine river is known this has long been the city's university district in fact the university of paris a leading university in medieval europe was founded here in the 13th century back then the vernacular languages like french and german were crude good enough to handle your basic needs but for higher learning academics like this guy spoke and corresponded in latin until the 1800s from sicily to sweden latin was the language of europe's educated elite and this by the way is a classic on camera when we're making a tv show you never want to talk about stuff that you can show because you don't watch the show to see my mug you watch the show to see europe but the stuff i'm talking about right now you can't really show so that's what we do with an on camera we sit next to a statue and we explain it regions called this university district the latin quarter because that's the language they heard on the streets today any remnant of that latin is buried by a touristy tabouli of ethnic restaurants still it remains a great place to get a feel for the tangled city before the narrow lanes were replaced by wide modern boulevards in the 19th century the scholarly and artsy people of this quarter brewed up a new rage paris's cafe scene by the time of the revolution the city's countless cafes were the haunt of politicians and philosophers who plotted a better future as they sipped their coffee and the cafe society really took off in the early 1900s as the world's literary and artistic avant-garde converged on paris in now famous cafes along boulevard san germain and boulevard san michelle free thinkers like hemingway lennon and john paul sartre enjoyed the creative freedom these hangouts engendered with its cafe and university scene paris had long been a launch pad for bold new ideas in the 18th century groundbreaking political and social thinking by french philosophers like voltaire and rousseau ushered in the age of enlightenment later this enlightenment provided the french revolution with a philosophical basis and it gave the american constitution many of its basic principles paris honors its intellectual and cultural heroes with tombs and memorials in its neoclassical pantheon it looks like an ancient temple but it's only about 250 years old from the time of the enlightened [Music] during the enlightenment and the age of revolution which followed everything was subjected to what was called the test of reason if it wasn't logical it was tossed out nothing was sacred the very notion of royalty was challenged and churches were turned into temples of reason even the use of city land for cemeteries as you learn at the catacombs of paris was rejected the sign reads halt this is the empire of death are we going in here we and but we get to come out on the other side this is the empire of death this is one of the most fascinating sights and anybody can go here they got a good guidebook it kicks off a one mile hike you won't soon forget the anonymous bones of six million permanent parisians line former limestone quarries deep under the streets in 1785 paris decided to make its congested city more spacious and sanitary by emptying the cemeteries which traditionally surrounded churches into this labyrinthine ossuary for decades priests led ceremonial processions of black failed bone-laden carts into the quarries where the black veiled bone laden carts into the catacombs steve i just had a kind of a deja vu watching this i remember my first time i went here i think i was 18 years old and i picked up and back then there was no security nothing you know you just paid a dollar and you went down and enjoyed yourself [Laughter] i enjoyed yourself in sort of bony way um but i literally remember picking up a skull and looking at it macbeth style you know and i wanted so badly to steal it i wanted it was the weirdest thing i forgive my honesty here or whatever but i'm just an 18 year old i wanted to have a skull and i i was going to put it in my little bag and i thought i just tossed in my bag and walk out nobody will know but i thought no i'm not going to and then i kind of wrestled with and i went back a couple years later thinking okay i'm going to get a skull this time and they were all wired together and there was security and you couldn't get a skull if you wanted it and now of course they've got all sorts of security covers and everything but uh man oh man if you're interested in human bones there's more bones here than you can shake a stick at students work carefully and artistically stacked as much as 80 feet deep each transfer was finished with a plaque identifying from which church the bones came and the date they arrived 1804 amazing they cleaned out the cemeteries and just kind of a as i said everything was subjected to the test of reason why are we losing important real estate downtown when we're so congested when we can uh unearth these things put them down in the in the old plaster of paris quarries one thing steve i always notice when i when i go to the catacombs for the rest of the day i'm tracking around plaster of paris because it's capable yeah all right yeah you've got a tourist and you see they've got plaster of paris on their shoes you know where they've been by the way it is really for travelers if you want to go there read the book strategize because lines can be long and there are ways around the lines and that booking a reservation before you go is very possible and the audio guide is really good now you may not have heard that lately it's quite good if you it's five euros more but i if you if you're curious about the history you get a lot more i didn't realize that there's an audio guide that's it's rather recent yeah nice well that's a tip that you'd have in the guidebook while there is history in dembones the carnivale museum filling a lavish old aristocratic mansion is the best place to sort through the story of paris pre-revolutionary france had a government by for and of the wealthy and as the rich got richer and richer people who lived in fabulous mansions like this became blind to the growing gap between the haves and have-nots in their country louis xiv aka the sun king was the ultimate king back when people accepted the notion that a few were born to rule and be rich while most were born to be ruled and taken advantage of room after room shows the opulence of the upper classes in the age leading up to the revolution louis xiv who enjoyed the luxury but anticipated trouble said apremoa la deluge after me the flood [Music] the heart of the museum features that deluge which hit when this man louis xvi was king the french revolution was kicked off with the storming of the bastille prison supporting the angry masses the liberal wing of the government took matters into its own hands declaring it wouldn't quit until the people had a constitution it was viva lenacion liberte egalite and freternite until the people literally beheaded the king and queen [Music] the place de la revolucion or revolution square it was here that the newfangled guillotine considered a humane form of execution in its day was set up and it was here that marie antoinette louis xvi and over 2000 others were made a foot sorter at the top according to this painting it took three to run the guillotine one to manage the blade one to catch the blood and one to hold the head in this case of marie antoinette up to the crowd today paris's vast revolution square is called place de la concord place of harmony the guillotine is long gone and its centerpiece is an egyptian obelisk [Music] the king and queen were beheaded by a stark and egalitarian government but the french love of fine living couldn't be kept down the 19th century was a boom time for paris the entire city was beautified with brand new boulevards and fancy architecture it was an exuberant age of money if you had it you flaunted it from the place de la concord the chanzel is a once a royal carriage oh i you know i love this steve this is the what's it called the royal axis and behind me is the louvre in a big horseshoe shaped that was the home of the king right there that big obelisk that's 20 meters in front of me that's where the guillotine was set up that's where they cut off the king's head up the champs-elysees you got the arctic triumph and that celebrated napoleon and the the sort of the french nation uh after the divine monarch was decapitated and then way in the distance you can kind of see a l-shaped uh shadow through the arch of the arc to triumph that's la defense that is the arc of the defense and that's a big globalization international office park and this axis that goes from the louvre to the pastel concord to the arctic triumph to the arctic defense that's called the royal axis going from old regime kings to revolution to nation to global economy and it's something i wanted to put in the show and thankfully my producer simon said you can't say all of that in the show people have changed channels they'll their eyes will glimpse over but i just love that the royal access now europe's grandest boulevard leads to the arc de triomphe the arch was dedicated to the victory of the people and their republic the triumph of french nationalism ah steve it is so fun to just enthuse about paris with you thank you for joining us thank you for um inviting me having me one last thing when you saw all those cars on the sean's alley say that last shot you showed every sunday the first sunday of the month there are no cars allowed on the shaw's elise what if you're there on a sunday it's the first sunday of the month by all means experience that street without any vehicles you know steve that's such an important tip and that's one reason i say read the guidebook before your trip because you don't want to be there and realize oh if we were here one day earlier we could have hiked up the we could have traffic free chances you know there's a lot of tips hiding in the book and we struggled to design the book so everybody knows everything but it's hard some people are more industrious about it and others are more just like we'll see what happens we'll have a good time either way but if you want to get it right the first time take it seriously you owe it to your family you're the tour guide get that book read it ahead of time take notes be where you want to be one of the highlights for me is i'm not a huge tour de france fan but i've been in france twice in paris twice when the tour de france is finishing in paris and you go to the champs-elysees and they go back and forth don't they several times it's such a long um you know uh theater anybody can get a front row seat and twice i've just stumbled in there and you know back in the day saw lance armstrong going back and forth it was exciting to be right there but that means you got to get that information and read it so hey thanks so much steve and and now gabe i think we're ready for some questions from our travelers we have a lot of wonderful questions rick um and thank you to both of you for that wonderful tour of paris uh before we get to the questions though can we have our quick word from our sponsor for the evening yeah sure gabe thank you you know i feel like i'm in such a good mood and it might be because i'm with my good buddy steve and we're going to be together in paris in a month it might be because i've got one more macaroon in just a moment it might be because of my madoka remember that word m-e-d-o-c after bonjour auvoir we are coming out of the pandemic we've got you know gabe you and i are two people out of about a hundred on our staff and we've been uh patiently waiting we've been investing in our infrastructure we've been investing in content we've been volunteering for food banks and then cleaning up the parks in our town we've been just staying busy but we haven't been able to do our tour guiding and next month steve and i are going to be over there researching the guidebooks right now we've got five tours in europe we just finished three successfully we've got five on the road we've got a thousand all booked up and ready to go in the next six months a thousand tours we've got 20 000 people signed up and it's looking like we're going to be able to travel as this pandemic becomes an endemic if you want to know more about how it's going we're all in this together you know we we we had 24 25 000 people have to cancel we gave back all the deposits two years ago and we opened the floodgates a few months ago and everybody came back or just like that our tours are almost sold out but we're all in this together we want to travel and we don't know what what's in store for us and we've got the vanguard the the courageous ones that are over there right now i'm calling every tour on their welcoming dinner in europe and welcome thanking them and and cheering them on uh it's working and we've got i've i've committed ourselves to having a very candid transparent log of all of the things we're learning the the bumps in the road as we get back traveling again and it's at ricksteevs.com in the tour section you'll find a little tab right there that says on the road again traveling after the pandemic and you'll be able to see how it's going but i'm feeling really good about things and i'm thankful that people are with us our guides are with us and we're traveling once again that is a word from our sponsor rickshaws.com okay all right well um starting out with some nuts and bolts questions about paris uh we have laurie who first wants to know what's the best time of year to visit paris in your opinion and should people avoid august a lot of french people take the month of august off would stores be closed so want me to handle that rick i'll start and then you can uh pile on if you want august is fine it's just warm nothing that a tourist cares about is going to be closed um trust me in fact it's a little bit quieter in august because europeans go to the beaches in the alps in august and often hotels are even a better deal now wait a minute steve if you need a plumber or an electrician or a dentist you can't find one in august they're under that may be tricky that might be tricky this is true yeah but that's that's why but that's that really truly that's that's not the issue um best season boy that's that's such a personal thing uh in i love the month of may i mean and and you know the the sort of the flip side of that may be mid-september to mid-october but i also love winter there i lived there for five years and loved winters because you had the city to yourself sort of too so it just any season can work i gotta i gotta chip in there we can fly direct to paris from all over the united states you can get there and back for for a reasonable price i just was there in october and it was delightful just bundle up and go off season it's it's a it's a if any place you could spend a week it's paris and you can do it off season just as well as during peak season there's a lot of tourist crowds and it's hot and sweaty in the summer our next question comes from nancy who's wondering if you're traveling in the rick steve's way you know a little bit frugal but staying in these um kind of locally owned places eating at these restaurants where the locals eat how much would you recommend that people budget per day in paris oh wow well let's see the well you know i'm about to update all that information now uh but assuming it's something like what it was in my memory uh you can get reasonable accommodations 120 uh room to yourself with two people um you can spend a lot more obviously and then i'd say 50 bucks a day for food and another 10 for transportation another 10 15 for sites probably adds up to about 200 bucks for a day for food and hotel what do you think rick that sound about right yeah i mean you could if you're staying put for a long time it can get cheaper uh because you're just living there and you're just going out to your cafe and renting a bike and exploring but if you're doing all the sights and everything in a hurry that's and going to great restaurants it's probably a couple hundred bucks a day you want to get that um if you're if you're gonna do a lot of sightseeing you want to get the the pass does the past steve help you uh skip the line still yeah yeah you know what i'll find out because of coba i you the situation with the museums now and i think it's going to be that way for a while is they want you to reserve before you go to get a ticket before you go online that said there's so few crowds you could show up and get a reservation so you're giving your reservation then walking right in is what's happening now a lot in these museums that's a very important point and i found that in my own experience in paris yes a reservation is required you want one right now you can go right in i mean it's like that for most of the day probably yeah exactly um so our next question is you mentioned the kind of enlarged bike lanes along the river um are there other plans to expand more pedestrianized zones within paris um and what's the public transportation like there the public transportation is phenomenal the metro i mean it's it's just the spaghetti network of um of underground subway lines to get you just about ever i mean it's hard to be on a street not see a metro stop somewhere a block or two blocks away um so getting and the bus i love riding the buses because it seems to be a shame to be underground in paris and the buses work well as well and you're gonna find that you walk a lot it's just such a pretty city that you don't there here comes the metro map good good move look at that those are metro lines they just lace the city um and then in terms of pedestrian zones the mayor and hidalgo has been a force this is the person who initiated the the the traffic free day on the champs-elysees and more and more areas are becoming bit by bit more and more traffic free they have an aggressive program for doing that in paris and slowing car speed limits down in the city of paris the whole center city it is 18 miles an hour you can't drive past 18 miles an hour so it's all the favor of the pedestrian wow and to drive people underground to take the metro why not yeah the metro's great i mean even if you could take a taxi either just as fast just commit yourself to the metro for sure we have todd who's wondering we saw you updating some of the guidebook in some of your iphone videos during this presentation um how do you even choose new places to consider for inclusion in the guidebook well we get lots of good feedback from people lots of good uh and then you know a lot of hoteliers and restauranters and local guides let us know we're in touch all the time i mean not a day goes by that i don't hear from somebody in paris certainly and in france and other places for something new that's open a museum or or a good restaurant or whatever and put you put in your file before you go and you check it out but a lot of that's reader feedback too i've just set up i'm going to be researching for 30 or 40 days this spring and i probably have 25 food guides booked to take me around towns all over europe and steve's so well connected in france that he wouldn't need that so much but when i go to any town in europe i love to have a local a person locally who does food tours and they give me uh three hours in the evening and they show me all their favorite places and uh i have to then decide do i want a place that all the guides are into are the hotels are recommending and that's really good on tripadvisor or do i want the little hole in the wall place but you know it really does help to have that local like steve when he comes into a town small town in france he'll sit down with his favorite hotelier and the hotelier knows steve he knows our book he knows our clientele and he will lay out the news on the restaurant scene and then if i'm with steve it's just so fun to then put that in a row and get out and check out each of those places and i should also mention steve said that we get it from a lot of reader feedback and if you go to ricksteves.com scroll to all the little links at the very bottom of the home page there is one for submitting guidebook feedback that goes straight to our books department we read everything promise um a few viewers are wondering how did the two of you meet oh so i like dave herland you mentioned earlier the cartographer i i was living in portland i think at the time i came up and took one of rick's talk classes at experimental college and like as dave mentioned that rick maybe his maps weren't the best my comment to him afterwards when i went up to was it looks like you have a hole in your knowledge and it sound it looks to be about the size of france and we went out we had a beer at the college inn and right afterwards yeah and just became friends before anything i i want to say that too and i joined the future in our hands group remember that peace group we were part of we became friends before we started working together yeah that's true you know i've been so lucky over the years that i found pat o'connor who loves and knows ireland cameron hewitt who loves and knows slavic europe steve smith who knows and loves um france and those are places where i was weak and i needed i just it fit really well um and and then steve you just stephenson was the ace tour guide and then eventually steve became the man who coordinated all of our tour guides and um and really owned france as far as the rick steve's approach to europe so we've had a good run steve i like that owning france thing i'm going to remember that i'm going to use that all right well we have time for one last question tonight um and that question comes from matt and sienna um and they are wondering if you could have the united states adopt one aspect of french culture what would it be and why wow slow down yeah i mean that's that's the big lesson i mean and rick was taught that by our no too slow down and take your time i mean friends france rewards the traveler that slows down and a lot of the traveling in france whether it's bike touring hot air balloons barge cruising right they it forces you to slow down and kind of travel at a snail space maybe yeah slow down and yeah and think about things and evaluate your trip before you go and really savor where you are and um you know what i would say macarons [Laughter] imagine how good it is i guess thank you zoom in minneapolis whoa it's just beautiful um i i think slow down is i think slow down is it take a long time for dinner with good friends you know don't think look at i was just whenever i go to an american city honestly there's skyscrapers there's glass there's concrete it feels kind of soulless i know there's seoul it's out in the neighborhoods and so on so i mean minneapolis is a great place but i was downtown minneapolis and it just felt soulless if i'm downtown anything in the center but in europe they have they have that vibrancy you saw it in the last hour all those videos all the people living upstairs and the restaurants and the little shops downstairs the people who know the butcher there's that social weave it's not necessarily the most efficient it's not necessarily the best for your economy but i think it's the best for your quality of living in your collective soul and that's what inspires me about the french they don't get it always right and we don't get it always wrong but the more we can travel together the more we can pick and choose and weave together a mix that we can all embrace very well said eve smith thank you so much for inspiring us it's all it just warms me up for the time i get to have what a treat to be traveling with you working on our guidebooks that's coming up very soon thank you gabe and thank you all for joining us this monday night travel and as i like to close out our monday night travels if you're not laughing at yourself if you're not making mistakes and celebrating them you got to loosen up a little bit here's a few bloopers i think they feature steve smith as well as me and you'll get an idea about how much fun you need to have when you're in europe perhaps your great great great great grandfather used this sedan chair no because it's a secret this guy by the way he looks like somebody who works there but he owns the chateau this is the aristocratic family whose family has owned is it chevron steve yeah uh yeah chevron yeah uh-huh the chateau chevrone is a beautiful man and he's admitting to me that that's not that historic this uh sedan chair it's a new one escargot you find it everywhere in france you do yeah but remember i'm asking you to tell me again like you know you told me that's why i'm prompting you is that right so when it comes to the menu that's good eat dangerously live by steve these loire castles or at least many of them morphed gradually steve right now if i remember correctly you were actually holding a branch down so i can get sun on my face is that right with all my might yeah that was it was really quite a acrobatic thing but you we wanted this the me with the green behind me and the castle the ruined castle but i i was in the shade and you said wait a minute i can pull the branch down without breaking it and you were heroic countryside retreats complete with spas and dancing girls and little corners where you could get your toes manicured she almost had it i can help your army by designing flying machines tanks gear systems water pumps and rapid-firing guns [Laughter] with ever more power and wealth france's ruling elite became dangerously out of touch and detached from the grinding reality of its people's daily lives so if you're trying to do an on camera and you're distracted by a bunch of looky-loos invite them in share the camera right yeah all right okay thank you life is good when you're filthy that summer born to the rule and the rest of it ah just deal with it hairstyles theater music table manners french taste spread across the continent he was the perfect embodiment of an absolute monarch this was great for fundraising as christians from far and wide got on their motorcycles came to town and gave generously to rebuild the cathedral grander than ever thank you everybody for joining us we'll see you next monday happy travels [Music] only steve london your eric goodnight gabe steve good night rick good night everybody thank you for joining us and see you next week [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Rick Steves Travel Talks

Views: 30,760

Keywords: Rick Steves, Rick Steves travel skills, Rick Steves travel lectures, Rick Steves travel talks, Rick Steves Europe, travel advice, travel tips, europe travel tips

Id: NIC0DXY-swE

Length: 93min 40sec (5620 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 01 2022