Status Updates From Rick Steves' Postcards from...

“In England, people go to port towns to gaze out to sea. In a good Italian port town, people go to the end of the breakwater and gaze inland.”
Oh Yes ! The top-do thing on the Amalfi coast is to get on a boat and gaze inland. Transcendental.

“in Europe a hundred miles is a long way and in the United States a hundred years is a long time.”

“Venice is boring for young people—no disco, no nightlife. It is only beautiful. Venice. It is a philosophy to live here . . . the philosophy of beauty.”
And the most beautiful place I have visited !

“Germans thrive on bureaucracy,” he jokes as we leave his small but efficient trackside office. “Even the toilet paper here comes in triplicate.”

The 2 countries given most space in this book :-
Italy and … Germany (now who could have guessed it 😛 *except yours truly)

“Nobody wants war, but everyone wants things they can’t have without war.”
-Bismarck

“God created all the world. It was marvelous. But France . . . it was just too perfect. So he put in the French to balance things out.”