About Us
We are Bryanna and Jason, a couple from Cincinnati, OH who love to travel and see the world.
You may notice that my husband is carrying a white, red tipped mobility cane in many of the photos in our travel scrapbook! That's because he is legally blind and he has something called "retinitis pigmentosa". For more about that, check out our "about us" page!
The important thing to remember when checking out our scrapbook is that TRAVEL IS FOR EVERYBODY, and losing your vision shouldn't mean losing your zest for travel, art, food, culture, and life! We find Rick Steve's Europe trips to be very accessible and fun for both of us.
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While reviewing our scrapbook I hope you'll enjoy the photos of our adventure, and that our scrapbook can help you better understand what travel looks like when you've lost some eyesight. Blind travelers can still be very independent and capable.
Romantic, beautiful, artistic Paris!
Jason was a bit late to getting diagnosed with his blinding eye disease, known as retinitis pigmentosa or "R.P.", which didn't happen until he was in his 30's. When he was told that he was losing his sight, I asked him what was on his "Vision Bucket List"; what he wanted to see while he still had sight. He said Vatican city and Machu Picchu, and we did those in 2023 and 2024!
So Jason said that the next "Bucket List" trip was for me, for a 2025 trip. So of course I said I want to see Paris, because I'm a visual artist and I wanted to see the art! I especially love impressionist paintings and Van Gough is one of my favorite painters, as is Monet, and I also really wanted to see the famous Unicorn tapestries and Monet's water lilies! Paris had everything I wanted.
Art history was one of my favorite classes in college and one of the things I like the most about Rick Steve's Europe is the emphasis on art in the tours! I was so excited to see the Louvre, Versailles, and the Orsay, plus access to many other museums on our own time.
Why Rick Steve's Europe for our Paris trip?
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Active, Accessible tours
Jason and I are pretty active people, and we love walking and using public transportation. Since Jason can't drive, he pretty much walks everywhere. Walking 20 thousand steps a day is not a problem. By traveling with a Rick Steve's group, it helps us to both learn the layout of the city and traveling on foot and by public transport, opening up travel to be more accessible for us both.
It also takes some of the planning burden off of me, as we discover how to navigate the city together with our guide.
2
Small Groups
We love traveling in small groups, and Rick Steve's tours tend to have folks on the tour with similar interests to us: travel, culture, and learning new things.
We always make some neat new friends of all ages on tours with Rick Steves, and we look forward to connecting to fellow travelers!
While we also have a fun time traveling together on our own, we find a small group enhances the experience and opens up a lot of social opportunities we wouldn't have otherwise!
3
ART, Art, ART!
I grew up watching Rick Steve's europe on PBS; we didn't have cable and it was one of the better shows to watch during 'prime time!'
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Rick's love of art, culture, and travel certainly influenced me growing up and his travel company's mindset aligns with what I'm looking for when I'm planning a Europe adventure for myself and my husband!
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Rick's tours are always jam packed with knowledgeable guides and the chance to experience some of the coolest art around.
This was actually our second Rick Steve's trip, with our very first being the 7 days in Rome trip that we took in 2023!
We had so much fun on that trip, and we found Rick Steve's tours to be accessible, lively, fun, and educational, everything we were looking for in a trip to Europe.
Rick Steve's tours are very accessible for people who enjoy walking (and if you are blind and can't drive, you learn to love walking).
