Enjoy the planning stage of your trip. Okay?

Clearly, the more you bring with you an understanding, the more you'll get out of it.

So that's what I want to talk about right now.

Bottom line in your itinerary planning is you've got to do your homework, so you know how to get the most out of every day.

Are you just going to go to all the famous places with some sort of a typical bucket list?

Or are you going to make it more tailored to your dreams and your interests?

I like to get off the beaten path.

I want to see the famous sights, but I also want to see what I call “back doors.”

This place is called Civita di Bagnoregio.

It's two hours north of Rome, near the town of Orvieto.

Now, it doesn't really matter, because tonight we're not talking about a specific place.

I'm talking fundamentals.

You've got this kind of magic all over Europe. If you do your homework. Okay?

Find this place somehow keeping its head above the flood of the 21st century. It's very rewarding.

We want to find places that somehow missed the modern boat.

Here's my favorite chunk of the Italian Riviera.

The Cinque Terre.

Now, the nice thing about these kind of places is they're not geared up. They don't have the infrastructure for lots of mass tourism.

Look at this little village here.

There's no modern buildings.

Now you're going to see the famous places.

You're going to see Rothenburg ob der Tauber. I mean, if you go to Germany, you got to see Rothenburg.

If you go to France, you got to see Mont Saint-Michel.

If you go to Italy, you got to see San Gimignano.

You know, these are very touristy places, but they're touristy for good reason.

What we want to do is think of a way to enjoy these places without the tour crowds. It's really important.

Venice is a very good example. Venice is mobbed with tourists. I think one reason Venice is sinking is it just wasn't designed to support all that weight of humanity. During the middle of the day, it's mobbed. All the cruise groups are there.

All the mass tourism staying on hotels in the mainland comes in for the day trip.

At night it becomes a small town of 60,000 people.

So what we want to do is spend the night.

We are tourists.

We need to get a picture of us in this big shoe. Let's be honest, there's nothing wrong with that. It's fun.

But I want to remind you that it is big business.

You know, the tourism is a major source of employment, a major source of foreign revenue. It's a big deal in these countries.

And there's a lot of promotional budgets trying to shape your travel dreams.

As consumers, and we are consumers, you've got to assess why is this information coming at me? And should I let it shape my trip? Okay.

You need to be a smart consumer.

Most travelers, or many travelers, let's put it that way, are not very clever when it comes to figuring out what's worth their precious vacation time.

As I mentioned, we Americans have the shortest vacations in the rich world. We need to use our time smartly.

Now, the typical American traveler that doesn't do any homework before their trip, they arrive in Amsterdam. They walk down the main drag, Damrak. You've all been there, if you've been to Amsterdam, and you just are attracted to it as a tourist because it's got all the little come-ons, and the advertisements.

And right there between Hooters and the Hard Rock Cafe, you've got what looks like a friendly tourist information office, and they're selling tickets to the most important sites in town, and they're all on sale.

Look at this.

You're in Amsterdam for two days in your life, and you could spend all that time seeing Madame Tussauds. The Body Works, the Ice Bar, the Torture Dungeon, and the Heineken Beer Experience.

No, these are commercial gimmicks. Suckering people in that don't have a guidebook.

Where's Anne Frank?

Where's Van Gogh?

Where's Rembrandt? Where is the Dutch Resistance Museum?

I mean, there's so much real culture, real art, real history that's not a commercial venture.

These are privately owned, little business-making gimmicks. They're fun. If you want to do it, fine. But don't think this is the entire menu.

Because this is what pays to get to your awareness.

This is what pays to be in the little racks in the hotel lobby, you know, not Anne Frank’s. All right.

So as smart consumers, you need to take the reins and know what's going to shape your travel dreams.

I think it's really important in our travels to see the touristy stuff.

But I also think it's really important to just feel the pulse of today's Europe.

Today's Europe. Every city's got a wonderful district that has no postcards, no tourists at all.

This is reality in Paris.

Not the Arc de Triomphe, the Arche de la Défense. It's a big business park. It's a shopping mall. It's where people go to work and eat and entertain and live outside of the center.

You know, in Paris, like so many cities, you've got a zoning situation. Within the circular ring road, everything has to be lower than the mansard roofs and lower than the church spires, and they protect it. It's great.

And that's where the tourists gather.

Outside of that ring road, you can have all sorts of skyscrapers and modern commerce.

I wouldn't focus on this, but to go to Paris and not see a little bit of this reality, you're missing a big part of it.

Okay, you got your dose of reality.

Now we can wallow in that medieval wonder. And I love it.

I just love going to the castles and the half-timbered villages and the vineyards and all that.

That's our dream. And that's good.

See, but we got to understand, that's the touristy end of it in a lot of cases, and we need that balance.

Now, when it comes to finding medieval Europe, I think we got to remember that our dreams sometimes are not what they think they are.

If I said medieval castles in Germany on a river, you would probably think what?

The Rhine, the Rhine.

That's where all the castles are, right?

But I will tell you, your image of the Rhine is probably the Mosel.

It's the little sister of the Rhine that comes into the Rhine at the town of Koblenz.

You go here, you got the meandering river. You got the beautiful vineyards blanketing the hills. You got half-timbered, charming towns and you got ruined castles you can hike up to see.

It's your Rhine dream come true. And it's not the Rhine. The Rhine is a muscular river with traffic on both sides and lots of trains and lots of noise. Lots of big hotels.

It's great.

I love the Rhine, but I bet you will love the Mosel more.

So it's in your court to do that studying and make your itinerary work for you.