3 Star Europe Tour Reviews — 331 to 360 of 362

Janine was the ultimate host and an excellent chef. She worked very hard to assure guests were satisfied with the trip.

I would recommend it, but with reservations. I think there should have been two guides, one to take a faster group and one for a beginner group. A few people on the trip should not have been. They were not comfortable on their bikes, and were a daily danger to whomever they were near. Something should have been done about it.
I also would have liked to ride faster, and spend more free time in the little towns.

I have planned to contact you with feedback, but haven't. The staff was great except the guide. He was not friendly or helpful. We were all disappointed in his lack of leadership and "guiding". Of the three trips we have taken, this was the least appealing. The route was not attractive, and mostly industrial, urban or rural. We were near places we know were charming and interesting, but did not visit them. I'm left wondering if it is that tour company. For 35 people biking there really should have been more staff on the road with us. Still love you!

Sorry, it rained the entire trip. Route and scenery would have been fine if not for that. Barge has seen better days. Staff (Stephan and Florence) are very pleasant.
Suggestion: Give the tour riders a sew-on patch to remember the tour.

The guide seemed lost most of the time. He didn't know where to stop for a picnic and one day we ate our lunches at a bus stop. I realize cafes mostly close in France between 12 and 2, but his lack of knowledge of where to find a toilet after lunch was a problem. He chastised us for being slow to re-organize, but then later we'd stop for no reason and wait for up to a half hour with no info from him. He was good at describing architecture.

My sister and I have taken many bike and barge tours. This trip was the first that we were disappointed with accommodations, staff, meals. We were not the only ones who felt this way. Sorry I would not recommend the tour. I will continue to monitor your website for future excursions.

I would recommend the trip only if the biking instructions we changed. Alsace is a wonderful area and the people, food, and accommodations were great! But the instructions for the bike routes were too confusing and unclear and not in English. They were in Dutch - not even French or German!

Yes, but only to the most experienced rider as the route is very diverse and at times rugged which would be very difficult for the average rider. coupled w/the bike/equipment is substandard making the ride even more difficult than it should be.

Croatia and the scenery were beautiful. However I felt the description of the bike ride was misleading. Most of the trip was on gravel roads, quite a few hills and biking in more traffic than I anticipated. The staff was great and the barge was great.

We prefer guided trips because we miss the guides knowledge of area. We start riding and don't take time to check out the sights

Tough for an American who doesn't speak German... Our shortcomings, and the only reason I might not recommend it but nothing wrong with the trip.

Our trip was for very good/strong bikers unless you got the electric bike which was great! The scenery was spectacular along the Amalfi coast!

Support people from Hooked on Cycling were never there. Bikes were just left at our first guest house along with a very poor set of directions. The bikes were great. We had to get them adjusted ourselves. The directions were incomplete, we got lost a few times. The flooded out Alythe hotel should have been substituted with somewhere else. The rooms were OK but the whole place was very musty smelling. My husband is very allergic to mold. He had to take medication before going inside. I know this trip was self-guided but even the locals couldn't figure out which way we were supposed to go when they looked at our maps.

One of our hotels was not up to our expectations or the trip rating. Most of our maps/directions were good but missed a detour/construction.

I would recommend the trip with reservations. The food on the boat was not special but ok. While our leader was competent I did not find him helpful at times and other times I found him condescending. The route descriptions were well done but we had to argue to have one for each rider even though it clearly stated we would each a have one. I would have like much more about the places we were visiting included on the daily route descriptions. Carrying a visitor guide is not easy on a bike. The bikes were not in good shape for our trip. The mechanic tried to do his best but they were not a "freewheeling" experience. On mine the gears did not work, others had similar issues. When the holiday depends on a good cycling experience then the bike becomes a priority.
I cannot recommend the experience whole heartily except for the amazing landscape of northern Netherlands. That part I really enjoyed. Also I enjoyed being part of a group. I would not recommend a person or couple try the trip because no effort was made to mix the people. I was part of a big group and so I always had people to cycle with.

In Ghent, too far from city centre to explore after biking unless take a taxi into the city. Antwerp museum was closed, as it was a Sunday. Very disappointing. Breakfast and lunch meals were almost always the same, got too uninteresting.

We were a bit late in the season so weather not great. Food brilliant.

Road surfaces were rough. Ride routes were hilly. Brought our own bikes.

We have done several bike barge trips in france and europe and other places. This one was just too crowded with tourists. Of course it was August, so that explains a lot. Our least favorite that we have done.

Accommodations were too cramped. Our first boat trip had more adequate rooms.
Breakfast was great but supper was so so. Not good vegetarian options .

Our guide was not good, would ride off too fast, often the tail end riders were lost and confused as they could not keep up. Everything else was excellent!

I found the trip operator a bit disorganized. Nobody told us that the tour guides & map etc were put in our room, and we did not know until the briefing time. During the briefing we went through the material kit, but we were not offered any additional info. The options re the accessories with the bike were not chosen by us, but the operator insisted we chose it and refused to exchange reading board for bike bag.
The map and guide do not always match. We expected bike route would be traffic free and for bike only, but apparently 90% of the time it was not the case. The bike was a bit heavy for me, especially I am only slightly over 100lbs.

I was pleased with the points of interest on the tour (Strasbourg, Heidelberg, Colmar, Breisach), however, the route was very industrial at times and there was just nothing special about it. The maps and route descriptions were terrible and I'd say that was the number one complaint of fellow passengers. I talked to the guide and he said they will redo the route for next year so hopefully with some changes, it will be much better.

There was some disconnect in passing along information. For example the barge had to leave earlier than 6:30 but info was not passed on. Fortunately my friends and I arrived and boarded the sister ship and got the info that the Angela Esmee was instructed to leave the port due to some Dutch holiday celebration. Good thing we took the initiative. There was no one waiting on the dock to give us this info.
Info about running a tab for drinks was false. We had to purchase tokens from a machine to use at bar. Bikes were somewhat rickety, having seen their 2nd season (according to a mechanic I talked to). Mine and some others made a grinding noise the entire time. The mechanic tried to fix it, but eventually I just tolerated it. I heard one mech say the bikes had a couple more trips this season. Good luck to the next owner.
Food was very good and the staff were very friendly. I would recommend a Bike and Barge trip to friends, but we ran into another group on a similar tour riding green bikes...they LOVED their bikes. We couldn't come close to saying that about ours. The green bike tour paid similar costs.

Main reasons for not recommending: Too many people. I would prefer a smaller group especially for lunches and stops along the way. Too much time needed for logistics with such a large group. (That being said, Leslie and the crew did a great job being as efficient as possible with this given the numbers involved.) The trip was marketed as meals all included. However, it was clear that we were "expected" to eat lunch at restaurants during our biking days. That would have been okay except we were always at the same place as dozens of other people (mostly people from our own boat who had not elected to take the guided trip option) so that the experience was not at all enjoyable. The restaurant staff were obviously harried at having to deal with such a large group at one time.
We always seemed to be in a rush to get back to the boat before its departure. I hadn't realized that the boat would have such a tight schedule to get from one docking point to another. I would have paid slightly more to have better food. There was way too much pork served; I felt starved for good quality, fresh vegetables by the time the tour ended.

We were to have 1 rest day in Vienna but had 2 rest days. The second being Budapest. We liked the city but would have preferred to see more of Hungary from our bikes. My husband is not an historic buff so was bored with sight seeing.

Information provided by tour guide about towns and attractions very limited, and sometimes inaccurate, compromising planning and enjoyment of the daily ride.

The Konstanz trip and bikes were very good. The Danube trip bikes were not as good and the scenery needed to be varied more since riding alongside the Danube got a touch boring after a while. (Review from Around Lake Constance and Danube Bike Path - Passau to Vienna)

I brought my own bike, but my friends rented. I was not impressed with the fitting of the bikes. The measurements requested by the site were insufficient to get an accurate fit and we had to request a new bike (inseam should be required). If I hadn't been there to fit the bikes nobody from the tour company would have been. Also, I had to replace a bolt on one of the bike's chain guard half way through the tour. At least check that everything is torqued down before renting them.

It's not that I don't recommend this trip, it's that I would recommend it with caveats. The guides were great, the cycling adequate. By this I mean, I found that on some days we started out and then, 25 minutes later, stopped in a city center for maybe 20 minutes. Why? To experience what, in 20 minutes? It would have been better to simply keep cycling. The first day of cycling I found, in particular, to be needlessly short. The barge in general was OK. The seats on the lounge chairs became uncomfortable after a while. Too thin.

The least satisfactory part of this trip was the food - I thought there would be more fish options, considering we were on the sea. The 2 fish dishes that were served were not good - one was very dry, and the other was smothered in a too-salty sauce. The desserts were memorable - for their lack of taste. The breakfasts were fine. The salads that preceded each main course were also fine. Someone mentioned that it might be worth your charging a bit more and offering better quality food. I was not the only one disappointed in the food offerings. More opportunities to swim would also have been appreciated, at least by me.
Actually, upon thinking about this, I probably wouldn't recommend this program, and would encourage others to look for better options.