5 Star Alva boat/barge tour reviews — 1 to 30 of 39

Great, personable guides on the bike rides & wonderful service & food on the ship. My favorite part was cruising downhill on the windy roads through vineyards & olive orchards toward the river! Highly recommended!

The boat was great, staterooms were very comfortable and the staff all around very friendly, competent and thorough. The food was very good with a nice variety and just the table wine was fine for our taste. The young men running the bike portion were excellent, very friendly and thorough in their planning and communication, with everything executed in a timely manner. They were so kind, funny and personable! The food they provided was very good and everyone enjoyed the rides, which were mostly downhill! Make sure you bring bike gloves!
The only suggestion would be to have better correlation beforehand between the bike rides and boat excursions. It was very confusing when trying to look at both before we arrived and with the boat asking us to sign up for excursions at least 4 days before arrival, it made it hard to see if there were any excursions available to the bike riders. Bottom line is that you can sign up for excursions once you get there, so if you are in a riding group, I would wait until you arrive.
As far as excursions, and I only did a few, they were again well, executed, but on the one to Guimaraes, we did not go in anything, but were given 45 minutes to just walk around. I would have liked to go in a few places with the guide since we had so much time.

The guides were super engaging, and they carefully curated daily trips for our group that reflected our ability level. they also worked really well with the cruise ship to make our experience very special. I'd cycle and cruise with our guide team again, in a heartbeat!

Phenomenal trip. The bike rides were great but the guides made it fantastic. I can’t compliment them enough.

The scenery was amazing. Our guide explained the different topography pertaining to the vines and wines made at different levels. Very informative.

The scenery was beautiful. Our guides, Horacio, Fabian and Sinan, without a doubt made this trip so memorable. They were so prepared everyday with our bikes ready to go, the planned rides with so much wonderful history and funny stories along the way. We had a delicious lunch prepared 1 on a lovely hillside one of the days! They looked out for our safety while making it fun. The boat was nice and clean and the food was very good.

Boat experience was excellent but the surprise was the cycling experience … beautiful vista views with spring wildflowers in bloom … just stunning. And our tour guides were fabulous … couldn’t think of a single negative about the trip. Highly recommend!

We did a bike tour and it was great. The rides are not super long but beautiful! The guides Horracio, Amos and Fabian were soooooo great. Our group just has the best time with them. Personable, safety focuses, professional, fun, knowledgable. The boat is very nice and rooms were perfect. We love the Staff on boat as well!!

We had a great time. The service and accommodations were fantastic. The country was beautiful. We e biked everyday. Trip site had all the T’s crossed. Went off without any issues. Our third trip with Tripsite.

The ARosa Alva is a beautiful ship with an outstanding crew. The town of Porto is charming.
The biking tour guides; Horacio, Fabian and Amos were outstanding. The riding was fun, though mostly downhill. The scenes along and above the Duoro were the kind that pictures cannot do justice to. A great trip to learn about Port winemaking. Outstanding!

Horácio, Amos, and Fabian were excellent guides as they led us all through the Douro River Valley. Horácio was kind, intuitive to our needs, fun, and very knowledgeable of the area and the people. Surprising at such a young age he was able to entertain us 60+ year olds. We were a large group of 22 all traveling together and had some most amazing best time! Also, Horácio managed to take photos of us cycling and put them on a google drive that we were then able to download! 5 stars to the men who guided us and to the tour. We packed a lot in a few days and wish we had more time.

Absolutely beautiful scenery. Amazing service. Everything was really nice, and relaxing. Every single employee was nice and helpful!

This was a lovely trip, beautiful scenery, great people and guides. The biking was mostly on good roads. On the boat, one of the most fun and interesting experiences was going through the locks.
What I had not realized would be the case is that we were a very small group of 8 on a boat with about 120 other passengers.

I highly recommend this tour. Portugal is a phenomenal country and riding an electric bike through such a gorgeous landscape is a terrific experience. Do book a hotel for two or three nights so you can explore Porto before boarding the ship. Marvel at the city's beautiful tiles and the historic sights while enjoying tasty meals served at attractive restaurants.
Our guides were fun and quite wonderful and the ship lovely and comfortable with delectable meals served by kind staff. Don't hesitate to book this tour. Riding through Portugal and feeling the breezes blow by as you coast down steep hillsides past canyons, rivers and terraced vineyards is an an experience you will never forget.

1) I loved the 2 hour walking tour of Porto the night.
2) I loved sitting on the upper deck of the cruise watching the terraced vineyards as we cruised through the Douro River.
3) The ship itself was clean, the staff was wonderful and attentive. They were always ready to help with a smile! I loved the touch of robes and slippers in our rooms!
4) I loved biking everyday! Our guides, Horacio and Kevin were fantastic! I thought the e-bikes themselves were excellent.

The scenery and the E-bikes used. The guides were excellent. Food on the boat and service was also excellent

Our guides made the trip memorable! Horacio and Kevin were wonderful and so much fun to be around. They kept us supported and educated on the area we were biking through. They both supported the varying levels of abilities within the group and I greatly appreciate their flexibility. My families memories of Portugal will forever be intertwined with Horatio's antics and Kevin's jokes. The scenery was wonderful. The biking was scary at times ( I really prefer a guardrail on the side of a cliff), but aligned with the rating for the tour.

This was an excellent trip with amazing scenery during bike rides. I would highly recommend this trip as a great way to add to your experience of the Duoro valley. The tour guide was excellent and added to the experience.

The bike and boat trip on the Douro River was a very memorable experience. The bike rides were scenic through towns, natural areas, vineyards, and olive groves. Our guide Nuno was skilled, informative, and made the trip fun for all. The ship is modern, rooms are spacious, food was excellent, and the staff were helpful and friendly.

The bicycle rides through the beautiful Douro valley countryside were incredibly scenic and not to be missed.

The most memorable parts of our trip were riding down from high in the mountains through the vineyards to the Douro River each day. Nuno and Matias ,our tour guides, were outstanding hosts and companions for our entire experience.They worked very hard to make sure that everything ran smoothly in order for us to maximize the enjoyment of our bike rides. The views and scenery on each ride were simply breathtaking, as the routes had been very carefully planned to be not only safe ,but stunning for miles and miles at a time.

The ship Alva is incomparable to any other boat/ barge tour we've ever taken. It was of equal quality to a Viking Cruise regarding the rooms, food service, staffing
and overall quality. The boat was large enough (120 passenger) to provide nice features such as a small spa, exercise room, sauna, outside and inside sitting areas and pool. The majority of passengers were there to cruise, there were 11 bikers. We really enjoyed te size of our small cohesive bike group.

The biking tour guides were wonderful and so is Portugal. Porto is a great little city with a long history. Go to the WOW cultural district and check out a few of the contemporary museums there if you have time. We enjoyed the E-bikes; a must in this mountainous terrain. My only comment regarding the bike riding
itself is that most rides were too short (+/- 10 miles and 2- 3 hours) and many were mainly down hill. We had to revise the two longest rides due to weather, unfortunately. Not the tour companies fault, but we would have enjoyed more riding time. We loved cruising down the Duoro, admiring the extensively planted hillsides and large vineyards. The local people we encountered at every stop were nice and welcoming.

This was an amazing boat bike tour. This was our 5th boat/bike trip with Tripsite. Our Guides Nuno and Fabian were great and took us to beautiful interesting rides along the Douro River. We were a group of 11 bikers. 8 were friends from Virginia and the three women who joined us were friends from Montana. We all had a great time together. This is the first time not everyone biked on our trip. This boat was much bigger than our other one. Their were 126 passengers.

The routes were varied and extraordinary. Some villages, some countryside and some off road exploration of ancient trails. The guides; Horacio and Kevin knew their paths and made accommodations for various skill levels. The scenery was breathtaking.

We receive several additional outings that we were not aware of that really added to the trip. Our tour guides, Tobias and Kevin were outstanding. We had just the right amount of biking, sightseeing, and relaxing, with good food and beverages.

The bike rides were my favorite part as we saw all kinds of different terrain.
The guides as well made the trip spot on. Very pleasant and knowledgeable about the area. The boat was a beauty very luxurious!

The bike tour was everything that was promised in the description. Our guide, Sonia Teh was wonderful. She was knowledgeable about the area, pleasant and professional.

We didn't know a lot about the Douro Valley and were amazed at how beautiful it is!

Beautiful country side.
Excellent guides Sonya and Fabian

The entire trip was amazing. The Allura ship was absolutely wonderful. Our bike tour guides, Fabian and Tobias, were the best.