the cult of Rick Steves
Last summer when we were in Italy one of the highlights of the trip was Cinque Terre. It's a series of small villages along the coast that Rick Steves raves about and one of the funniest things about visiting was the number of people walking around with the trademark blue book. The rest of the trip we saw a lot of Rick's books around but nothing towards the copies-per-capita in Cinque Terre region.
Fast forward a year and a bit, and this summer we were in the lakes region of Italy. We followed the recomendation in the book and stayed in Varenna and took trips here and there on the ferries when we wanted to see more of the area. Again, Rick did us well as we had a really nice relaxing time in the area. What we didn't expect was the number of Rick Steves junkies that we were going to come across, particularly since we were on the tail end of the season and the area we were in wasn't super highlighted in the book (unlike Cinque Terre region which gets a bang-up write up). One evening we were enjoying a glass of wine in a bar overlooking the lake and heard a few couples around us strike up conversations - and it came out that six of the eight couples / groups there were all Rick Steves fans and relying on that set of books when they travel. Oh, and yes, the tour group that showed up to our hotel the evening before we left was the Rick Steves 'europe through the backdoor' tour - funnily enough none of the people at the bar the night before were from the tour...