Rick Steves is traveling with a mission
Plus: Top news of the week — City council reimposes criminal nuisance penalties; Airport wins grant for pedestrian 'jetways'; Wells Fargo consent order lifted; Siemens announces Charlotte expansion
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In a Charlotte stop, the international travel writer shares tips from a lifetime of unearthing European adventures; encouraging Americans to ‘venture beyond Orlando’
Travel writer Rick Steves speaking to the World Affairs Council of Charlotte on Thursday about the ability of travel to bring the world closer together. (Photo by Daniel Coston/Daniel Coston Photography)
by Tony Mecia
Travel writer Rick Steves has been spending 100 days a year in Europe for decades, using his research to build a travel guide empire with PBS shows, tour groups and dozens of guidebooks.
But his success is built on more than just a collection of budget tricks and travel hacks. His message has morphed into a full-blown philosophy that travel done right is more than a mindless vacation — that it brings people closer together, promotes peace and is more rewarding when you avoid the crowds and get to know the locals.
He elaborated on the value of travel Thursday to the World Affairs Council of Charlotte. And he really did elaborate — with a 90-minute lecture at Knight Theater followed by a 60-minute question-and-answer session over dinner at the Charlotte City Club.
Steves, 68, said travel has changed since he self-published his first travel book in 1980, “Europe Through the Back Door,” now in its 40th edition. In some ways, he said, it is becoming more accessible and easier to get around. But in the Instagram era, it’s getting tougher to find those hidden gems away from the crowds.
Having authentic experiences might mean visiting Paris in the winter, or spending the night in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik after the cruise ships leave for the day, or spending time in the countryside away from the most famous sights.
His guidebooks focus on Europe, which he calls “the wading pool for world exploration” and a “springboard to places that I find much more interesting, frankly.” He and his team of 100 workers based in Seattle see their mission being “to equip and inspire Americans to venture beyond Orlando.”
Here are some of Steves’ remarks in Charlotte on Thursday on a variety of travel-related topics:
◼️ On ‘reality travel’ vs. going to Disney: “When you do travel, you can travel with the window up or the window down. You can see cliches and you can protect yourself from the realities, or you can actually roll down your window metaphorically and connect. Thomas Jefferson said that travel makes a person wiser, if less happy. I’ve always wondered about that. Why does it get less happy? Maybe it is more happy just to go to Disney World. There’s one guidebook that outsells my ‘Rick Steves Italy’ guidebook, and it’s a guidebook to Disney World! That’s a big market. … It’s a holiday, or there's reality travel. You have a choice. I’m not saying do one or the other. I’m saying mix it up. Travel makes us a citizen of the planet. Travel, I think, if you’re a person of faith, connects us closer to God. And it reminds you that if you’re a person of faith, if you believe that there’s a god, then logically, everybody on this planet is children of God. That means we’re all brothers and sisters, and every one of these great monotheistic faiths encourages us to love our neighbor. Well, if you look at it from a religious point of view, or spiritual point of view, there is no difference in neighbors between across the street and across the sea.”
◼️ On finding authentic experiences: “One of my primary things is finding places that are what I call ‘back doors’ — places that somehow are keeping their head above the flood of the 21st century, places that have no promotional budgets, places that are just going through another century. Now, to be honest, it’s kind of hard to find those places now compared to the past, but there still are a lot of amazing places that we can find where we are not part of the economy but where we are part of the party. … Because that’s what we’re up against as consumers: Advertising wants to shape our trips so people can make money off of us. …
“You can find these places that somehow missed the modern boat. Look at that. [Shows photo of Vernazza, in Italy’s Cinque Terre.] That’s my favorite chunk of the Italian Riviera. It’s not very famous. And it’s not very popular because it’s hard to get to. And there’s no comfortable hotels here. … And that’s actually good news, because it keeps away the most obnoxious slice of the traveling public: people who insist on comfortable hotels. They’re over in Portofino complaining about the crowds and the prices and the rude service. And I’m sitting here, man, having the time of my life, drinking wine that was made right on that hilltop, hiking through the vineyards, climbing to the ruined castles and enjoying those twinkling views of the Mediterranean with Italian friends. You can do that!”
The town of Vernazza on the Italian Riviera has no large, comfortable hotels and can be tough to get to, which keeps out the most obnoxious foreign travelers. (Shutterstock photo)
◼️ On ‘Ugly Americans’: “In our travels, it’s important that we’re not ethnocentric. Remember that ‘Ugly American’ concept? I don’t hear it very much anymore, thank goodness. But, you know, a lot of Americans were called ‘Ugly Americans.’ They’re not bad people, they just were ethnocentric. They thought we were the norm. There are not just ‘Ugly Americans.’ When you travel, there’s ‘Ugly Japanese,’ ‘Ugly Chinese,’ ‘Ugly Indians,’ ‘Ugly Germans,’ ‘Ugly Russians.’ Those are the ‘ugly’ countries, because they’re big. It’s reasonable for people from those countries to think they’re the norm. It’s harder to find an ‘Ugly Bulgarian’ or an ‘Ugly Estonian’ or an ‘Ugly Norwegian,’ because you’ve only got 3 or 4 million people that speak your language, and it’s hard to imagine that you are the norm. But it’s easy for us to think that we drive on the right side of the road and they drive on the wrong side of the road. It’s easy to think that people who sit on something when they go to the bathroom are the norm. No! We’re the oddballs. Oh, man, it’s so fun to recognize that.”
◼️ On enhancing travel through knowledge: “I’m really into this idea that the more understanding you bring into your sightseeing, the more you’ll get out of it. People ask me for budget tricks. I can’t get you into the windmill any cheaper than the next person. We’ll all pay 10 bucks. But if you understand what a windmill is, you’ll have double the experience. If you go to a windmill and you don’t know what an Archimedes’ screw is, you don’t know really what a windmill is all about, you see. Centuries ago, the ingenious Dutch had almost no resources. They were able to harness the wind and harness that power, and when the wind kicks up, it turns those big blades with a series of gears. It makes this motion and that spiral contraption would kick that into motion and it would pump water from down there, over the dike and into the sea. They would bail out the seabed, turn that salty seabed into fertile farmland and become a wealthy, powerful nation because of their ingenuity.”
◼️ On cultural differences between Europe and the U.S.: “All over Europe, you can go to markets with people who are happy to pay too much for their bread in order to buy it from the person who baked it. It’s not practical. It’s not right or wrong. It’s impractical from an economic point of view. I live in a country where people aspire to have a freezer in the garage so they don’t have to go shopping every 10 days and they can go to the big box store and really get that economy of scale. You know, that’s a turn-on here in America. That’s not a turn-on in France. In France, they manage to have a small refrigerator under the sink, so they have to go to the market every morning, pay too much for their stuff, but buy it from their neighbors and connect with each other. It’s part of their family values, part of the weave of their society.”
◼️ On his favorite country: “India is my favorite country. … It just roughs up my ethnocentrism. It rearranges all my cultural furniture. India humbles me. I thought I knew music until I went to India. … Meter and mode one more time, in A-minor, that kind of thing — It has nothing to do with it with Indian classical music. And I thought, ‘Whoa, this world has got so many dimensions!’ And that’s just one tiny example. … My favorite country in Europe is Italy, and that’s probably because Italy is the closest thing to India, as far as messing up what you thought was normal. I mean, they have this chaos, this beautiful chaos — which is just confusing, but it’s gorgeous.”
◼️ On packing light: “9 by 22 by 14 inches — that’s what you can carry onto an airplane. That’s my self-imposed limit. I spend a third of my adult life living out of that bag. … I’ve never met anybody who said ‘God, I wish I would have packed heavier.’ With experience, you get serious about packing light. There’s no excuses — man, woman, rich, poor, north, south, winter, summer, two weeks, two months — you pack light. And you’re glad you did. There’s two kinds of travelers: those who are packing light and those who wish they were packing light. … I know I have no credibility among women, right? Most of my staff is women. They all pack as light as I do. [On my website] there's a one-hour lesson by Joan, one of our guides. She’s got all the information on how women can pack light, too.”
Today’s supporting sponsor is VIA Health Partners, formerly Hospice & Palliative Care Charlotte Region. New name, same exceptional care for families in 32 counties across North and South Carolina.
This week in Charlotte: Ledger’s Elections Hub returns as early voting starts; IKEA coming to Promenade; Wilks dismissed by 49ers; Toppman’s take on ‘Mean Girls’
On Saturdays, The Ledger sifts through the local news of the week and links to the top articles — even if they appeared somewhere else. We’ll help you get caught up. That’s what Saturdays are for.
Education
CMS bond update: (WFAE) The renovations of Billingsville, Sedgefield, and Marie G. Davis elementary schools — the first projects among 30 approved in a $2.5B bond referendum in November — are expected to be completed by August 2025, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Superintendent Crystal Hill recommended LeChase, Jacobs, and Leeper as project managers for the bond construction, saying they had experience in handling hundreds of projects in the past 25 years.
Belmont Abbey increases fundraising goal: (Biz Journal) Belmont Abbey College has exceeded its initial $100M fundraising goal for its capital campaign and is now aiming to raise $150M by 2026, coinciding with its 150th anniversary. The additional $50M will primarily fund the construction of a new monastery, scholarships for the Honors College and endowed chairs for faculty. The campaign, named Made True, has garnered support from thousands of donors and has already secured $9M in state funding for a performing arts center.
Politics
Ledger’s Election Hub is back: (Ledger) Just in time for early primary voting (which started Thursday), the Ledger’s Election Hub is back up and running, chock full of easy-to-navigate summaries of races and candidates, as well as questionnaires and some videos. It’s free for all, because we feel it’s critical to get balanced information out to help citizens make informed decisions. Check it out!
Criminal penalties for ‘quality-of-life’ offenses: (WFAE) The Charlotte City Council voted 7-3 on Monday to reimpose criminal penalties for public urination and defecation and public masturbation, over the objections of some opponents who worried about the effects on homeless people. Backers of the measure said police need more tools to address complaints and said the city is expanding its outreach and adding portable toilets uptown.
Local news
Transportation money headed to CLT: (Axios Charlotte) U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited the Charlotte airport Thursday, where he announced the airport is receiving a $27M grant to help pay for 16 new jetways, which are the bridges that passengers walk through to get from the terminal to their planes. The money will also pay for new equipment to power and air condition the jetways.
Inheritance lawsuit: (Ledger🔒) Descendants of Charles A. Cannon, the late North Carolina textile magnate, are taking legal action to prevent Atrium Health from receiving a multi-million-dollar inheritance originally designated for Cabarrus Memorial Hospital. The family says Atrium Health, formed through a merger in 2022, no longer qualifies as the intended recipient, as Cabarrus Memorial ceased to exist as a public entity, and Atrium Health allegedly fails to meet the trust's conditions for charitable purposes. According to the petition, Atrium asserted its right to the money and sent a letter threatening to sue if the trustees did not start making distributions to the hospital by Feb. 15, 2024.
Sorry, no meatballs: (WCNC) Home goods retailer IKEA is planning a 15,000 s.f. store in the Promenade on Providence shopping center in south Charlotte that will be a location where customers can plan interior design projects and order IKEA goods. It’s the fifth store of its kind that IKEA has announced this year, and more are coming, the company said.
Business
Wells Fargo consent order lifted: (AP) Federal banking regulators have lifted a 2016 consent order on Wells Fargo, saying that the banking giant has addressed its toxic culture after its fake accounts scandal. The decision led to a surge in Wells Fargo's stock Thursday, closing at its highest level since March 2022. The consent order had mandated Wells Fargo to overhaul its sales practices and provide additional consumer and employee protections.
Siemens Energy expands: (WCNC) Siemens Energy Inc. is set to expand its factory in Charlotte, creating 475 new jobs. This expansion will mark the company's first U.S. facility capable of producing large-scale transformers. It will also add positions in Raleigh.
Sports
Charges dropped against Miles Bridges: (ESPN) Prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Charlotte Hornets star Miles Bridges in connection with an October incident in which he was accused of throwing billiard balls at a car driven by his former girlfriend. Prosecutors said the woman gave conflicting statements to police. He previously pleaded no contest to a June 2022 domestic violence case.
Steve Wilks fired from 49ers: (ESPN) The San Francisco 49ers fired defensive coordinator and former Carolina Panthers interim coach Steve Wilks on Wednesday. Niners coach Kyle Shanahan said on a conference call that it “really says nothing about Steve as a man or as a football coach. I mean, he's exactly what we wanted as a man. He is a great football coach.”
From the Ledger family of newsletters
What’s hot🔥 in college admissions: College admissions counselors describe the biggest new issues and trends facing college applicants these days, from major headaches over a new FAFSA rollout to the new digital SAT and the increase in colleges deferring decisions for students who applied early.
Housing market bottoming out? After experiencing 22 consecutive months of double-digit year-over-year declines, the Charlotte area's housing market may be stabilizing, as the number of homes sold in Mecklenburg County in January dropped by only 6% compared to the previous year.
Trust-based philanthropy: A nonprofit dance studio in south Charlotte, Charlotte Cirque & Dance Center, secured a $10,000 grant in an unconventional competition aimed at supporting projects least likely to receive traditional philanthropic funding. The grant was awarded by Next Stage, a Charlotte-based social impact consulting firm that works with nonprofits, as part of its initiative called “The UnFundable Project,” which seeks to raise awareness of a trend called “trust-based philanthropy.”
Celebrity memory: The Levine Jewish Community Center posted a video last week remembering the time when actor Mandy Patinkin came into the JCC asking for a temporary membership while he was in town filming the TV show “Homeland.” (He went unrecognized by the membership coordinator at first — but word quickly got out that he was there.)
Wednesday (🔒)
Development ‘whispers’ debuts: In the Ledger’s first-ever “Charlotte Commercial Real Estate Whispers” column, we explore several buzzy topics, including a trial that’s set to go to court next month over the empty site at Providence and Fairview, a land sale on Mint Street and the latest on the Quail Hollow pit at Park and Gleneagles.
Friday (🔒)
Grieving mom seeks justice: Britta Marshall, a mom whose 30-year-old son DJ was killed by a drunk driver last March, says she’s disgusted that the driver was given a plea deal last week of 30 days in jail. She had begged a judge to impose a harsher sentence on the driver, Roy James Jackson, whose blood alcohol level was above the legal limit three hours after the accident.
Dilworth land swap: Entities affiliated with Atrium Health have acquired two parcels in Dilworth, as Atrium builds out the Wake Forest University School of Medicine’s Charlotte complex. And in a related move, a well-known real estate investment company will give up its headquarters on Morehead and relocate to a prime spot on East Boulevard.
‘Mean Girls’ review: Ledger arts critic Lawrence Toppman gives us his take on the touring performance of “Mean Girls,” which is at Belk Theater through Sunday.
Lyles sounds off on triplexes: Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said she’s supportive of the new triplexes that are popping up in some neighborhoods, which are now allowed as part of the new Unified Development Ordinance that took effect last summer. The Ledger wrote about the topic of triplexes earlier this month.
A twinkle in his eye: Jim Calder, who passed away on Christmas Eve at age 90, is remembered for his zest for life, marked by adventures such as surprising his wife with a Valentine's Day trip to Paris, singing atop a horse during a family trip to Moose, Wyoming, and going for an elephant ride in Thailand. Described as having a “twinkle in his eye,” Calder lived a full and joyful life, leaving cherished memories for his family and friends.
‘Roads first’ plan: Charlotte’s $13.5B transportation plan, emphasizing “roads first” to garner support from Republican lawmakers, is revealed in a list of projects, including road expansions, intersection improvements, and new pedestrian infrastructure. However, some proposed “roads first” projects, like widening major roads in congested areas, may face challenges such as high costs, disruptions, and limited space for expansion.
🏆Got 5 minutes this weekend? Nominate someone for the Ledger’s 40 Over 40 Awards!
Nominations close on Thursday at midnight for our fifth-annual Charlotte Ledger 40 Over 40 Awards, which honor and celebrate unsung heroes who are making a big impact in our community.
We all know people who fly under the radar and deserve recognition because of the work they do — in business, education, nonprofits, volunteer work, healthcare, and any other sector in Charlotte.
The nomination process is easy, only takes a few minutes, and it’s open to anyone. Send in your nomination — or multiple nominations — today!
Corrections
A news summary item in Friday’s newsletter referred incorrectly to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. He is the current CEO of Bank of America (not the former CEO). Our apologies.
An article this month examining Aldersgate in one instance gave the wrong abbreviation of the state regulator overseeing the retirement community’s finances. It’s the N.C. Department of Insurance, or NCDOI.
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman, BC Creative