4 Star Douro River E-Bike & Boat Tour Reviews — 1 to 9 of 9

Portugal is beautiful and seeing it from a ship on the Douro River was perfect for me. I enjoyed the excursion to Castelo Rodrigo and comments from our ship guide. Food was delicious and ample. Ship staff were particularly helpful hunting down my lost luggage and offering first aid when I tripped on the sill to the bathroom.

The wonderful Douro River views and vineyards as seen up close via bicycling.

The most memorable part of the trip was the scenery of the terraced vineyards, and olive tree orchards against a clear blue sky. Mountain roads without cars winding through the landscape to the Douro River below.

Food on the Alva Rosa was excellent as was the service, the bar staff, cooks, and servers.

Tips: Use multi use water bottles as part of bike tour. Longer rides with a little more uphill as we had E bikes!

Accommodations on the boat and the food were spectacular. The biking trips were very short and mostly downhill. The guides did not provide much history or background for the sites that we visited.

The scenery both on the boat and during the biking were spectacular. The food was fantastic. The rooms were really comfortable. I really loved the trip.

For improvements, having the guides know where bathrooms are along the way would be nice. A lot of people had to find bushes along the way. On your France barge I took we stopped in towns to walk around and sometimes had a coffee and people used the restrooms. More information on the towns would be gppd. Also, we had a very sick guide and maybe she should have been traded out at some point and not been eating and hanging out with us. She's a lovely person but if I were that sick I would stay away from people as much as possible. We all came home very sick.

The biking was lovely, the service on the boat was excellent.

But, communications between the boat and the bike guides was terrible. There was a lot of second guessing and lost time.

For the biking, more cultural information would have been good. Stops for coffee in interesting places would also heighten the experience.

This was a river cruise with a biking contingent of 19 people out of 100 people. I would have enjoyed more biking. I especially enjoyed our picnic at Castello Rodrigo, the food and views were fantastic. Later that same day we stopped for a break in a small town where the local townspeople invited us to see their church. Truly magical!

The most memorable both positive and negative :
Having a small biking group aboard the ship we were on- we got to get off and bike through the countryside and explore in a way a bus tour group (like the other people on the boat) we not able to . It was a beautiful experience and great guides .
The most memorable negative was the boat was German and all the people on the ship were German and myself and my friend were the only 2 American and english speaking people. I would have appreciated a heads up that this boat rarely has Americans travel on it as I may have selected a different option for my trip and we were both unable to socialize or understand much of what being said . Being that every one on this boat was in their late 60's and 70's it was an old and old world vibe and I can not say that we were meant to feel welcome by anyone other than our waiter and bartender!

The Douro River area is absolutely beautiful with a wide variety of agriculture, geography, cities and small villages to enjoy. Biking provides a great experience unlike what can be done on a bus tour. We were a group of twenty two, estimated ages 50 and up, all with reasonably similar skills and fitness levels. The cycling was well managed by a team from Germany (fluent in English) and the equipment was in excellent condition with a few minor issues promptly addressed. The daily tours started with transportation to a drop off point well above the river to begin cycling to the docking location of the Alva, a beautiful nearly new ship. Much of the cycling was therefore downhill and the occasional up hills were easily managed by most with power settings on the E-bikes. We'd consider most of the cycling as moderate and relatively safe on mostly country roads, although there are stretches of downhill with sharp curves, steep drop offs and city biking including cobble stone roads that less experienced riders may consider risky. The daily biking ranged from about 17 miles to 37 miles with periodic stops for rest, water, refreshments or lunch on the longest day. We'd recommend having at least some prior E-bike familiarity. The September weather was near perfect - cool mornings, warm afternoons, sunny, no humidity so light jackets over short sleeves seemed to be just right.