Europe Tour Reviews — 6511 to 6540 of 6832

I know you know this, but the My Story is an old boat. Our bathroom smelled really bad. The food was average. The staff was incredible. The biking was spectacular. Leslie, our tour manager could not have been better. This was an incredible trip and it was a great value because the boat was old it wasn't very expensive. The folks at tripsite we excellent as well.

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.

We highly recommend the Paris to Bruges bike and barge on the Elodie but one must be a strong cyclist as there are hills. The food was really excellent. Comradery among the group was high, and that's one of the great aspects of the trip.

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

Besides information on the bike routes, I enjoyed the information on side trips.

This was the first trip of this type that we have ever done and my first time to France. It was a great way to experience the country and it was nice to see rural areas, historic small towns, castles and the big city of Paris. The crew was wonderful-- friendly, accommodating, knowledgeable and thoughtful. The trip price was a great value for all that we received and experienced. It was great to get so much exercise while on vacation-- walking and biking makes it possible to see and do so much in the fresh air and to burn off the great food and wine we enjoyed. I highly recommend this trip!

This was our first tour in hotels, others have been on barges. I would recommend staying with the barges. There is no contact with a person regarding the tour or the bikes except hotel staff so issues with the bikes were difficult. Bikes were in bad shape we had 4 flats and a broken gear casing so we spent a lot of time in bike shops getting repairs done. Thank goodness ther are lots of bike shops in Holland. GPS was good but one day took us to the wrong hotel some 10 km off course and missed a town we had to back track the next day to see, so that was very annoying. After that we made sure it had the right destination on the GPS. Some hotels were lovely but a couple were very small. We had purchased the meal plan and that was good, though Tripsite said we would have a choice of meals there were 3 places it was just one meal offered to bike tour participants. Holland is beautiful and enjoyable to bike though we had lots of rain and wind so dress appropriately.

Barge part of it was excellent, riding for 2 of the days got to be long and monotonous, scenery always the same, but staff did great job. I'm probably critical a bit because I did a Holland bike ride that was so scenic.

One of the best holidays we have ever experienced. Great cycling along the Moselle with excellent and knowledgeable guides and then returning tired but exhilarated to an most welcoming environment on the barge - the IRIS. Meals were excellent and entire crew and owner went out of their way to ensure we enjoyed the total experience. Would recommend this trip to anyone. We will be back for more.

Our group was more than well treated. The staff and officers on the barge went out of their way to help us and make the entire trip one to remember. The tour director really put himself out for everyone on board. He even helped us to solve a problem after we had left the boat at the end of the trip. It was outstanding.

We had a great time and plan on another bike-and-barge trip sometime. We loved the mix of passengers from different countries. Some of the other passengers, using other tour companies, had a few more details of the ports of call, and this would have been helpful for us, and may be a useful selling point for Tripsite.

Even for a novice biker I was looked after and given the opportunity to cycle shorter legs and enjoy the sailing on the boat. Bikes - we had a couple of bikes that had gear problems, otherwise they were fine.

Yes, yes, I would and have recommended this trip to friends. It was very relaxing, fun, offering beautiful scenery, helpful staff! visiting the small villages was a treat. The route and route guide was user friendly. Hope to bike this way again soon.

Garrit, our bike tour leader, was a novice on this route as well as a poor communicator to the english speaking clients. The docking area changed at each stop from the printed instructions, and the maps and turn-by-turn instructions were only partly correct! Everyone got lost at some point in the trip!! I had asked for GPS routing for my bike Garmin GPS but was told the route was to new and that it was not available! I think some accurate preparation would have made the trip more pleasant.
Second - the route along the Rhine is not scenic (as on the Danube) with few small towns to stop and look/snack on the way. The most notable sights were gravel pits and cement manufacturing. Of course, that is not the fault of the tour operator, however, they should have provided a detailed description of the small towns on the way (although not on the river) to give us the option of exploring the interesting ones and forgetting about the towns with 3 streets and no interesting sights.

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 loved everything about this trip from the boat, the staff, the bikes and, of course, the scenery. I highly recommend this trip for anyone who likes to take a trip up close and personal.

Boat staff need to learn how to be more polite and friendly. The management seems to be in the military service.

Trip maps were difficult to decipher in some cases and needed more explanation. There were too many questions of ""which way do we go?, we must have missed our turn, where's the ferry?

Why couldn't we get a cup of coffee or tea before 7am or 4pm? Why couldn't we get a beer in the lounge right after returning from ride? Why couldn't we drop off our panniers before 4 on Friday when the man in charge was sitting at his desk doing nothing? The crew for the most part was accommodating but the Teutonic influence was in evidence too often, and I am 50% German. My grandfather having served for Germany in the First World War.

This was my first biking trip - truly enjoyed it and am looking forward to my next trip.

We found the map directions confusing at times--i.e. Cross bridge and 3 streets and turn right. Sounds easy enough, but actually it meant 2 major streets and a round about. We usually solved this by using Google maps. But it added stressful tens of minutes to resolve. It pretty much meant that we slightly dreaded arriving at even a little village, due to the almost guaranteed confusion. Having the route available as a google map path would have been much much much better.
It's the service we pay for, not the specific route. It also made it feel like the route had not been retested for a while. Getting a bit lost wasn't all that bad, and we found some nice paths near Arles. The bikes were state of the art and high quality. None of our group liked the automatic transmission on the Bosch drive. It would frequently incorrectly shift in the middle of a climb and caused a bit of needless suffering. All in all it was a fun time. We couldn't have achieved the ride without the e-bikes.

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.

1) In the boat is possible to rent helmet for EU$ 5/week. This renting is good for travelers that spend more time in Europe. I'm not sure if this information is available in the Tripsite's site.

2) I ordered a E-bike for my wife. In the boat I saw that 2 kinds of E-bike are offered to the customers. My wife would love bike in a more comfortable E-bike.

3) According to the staff of the boat, I should speak German. I don't know the source of this information. This information is used to organize the passengers in the restaurant.

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.

The Rhine from Mainz to Basel, for the most part, is industrial and not as picturesque as other European bike and barge routes we've enjoyed. There were a few cities (Heidelberg, Germany and Strausbourg, France) which were beautiful and offered much to do, but we were expecting the scenic bike routes with quaint towns for cake and coffee, or beer stops along the way and were sorely disappointed. But the most disappointing aspect of this trip was the inability of the on-board guide to give proper instructions nor enlighten us of things to see or visit. We found out about popular sites from all channels except the guides. In Strausbourg, while chatting with tourists, we heard of an amazing evening light show projected onto an enormous cathedral - huge crowds gathered to enjoy this historic presentation, yet nothing was mentioned of it by our guide. We have needed so little guidance to enjoy our bike and barge trips, but this one missed the mark. Based on previous trips that we've done, we'd convinced 2 other couples to join us and they were underwhelmed and disappointed as well. The barge and accommodations were adequate, though rooms were random sizes no matter which deck you choose. One couple paid extra for the upper deck, but their room was much smaller than another couple's on the lower level. The staff and meals on this barge were top notch and we can't say enough about the gourmet chef and tireless staff.

The food could be a lot better, and we would even pay more. Other than that the trip was lovely.

We enjoyed ourselves so much that we are already planning another bike and barge trip. It would have been nice if there were a better split in English speaking guests as most of the guests spoke German and we didn't get a chance to mingle much. Tripsite was very good to work with and we would use this company again. "

We had a fantastic trip we loved everything about it. I would recommend this trip to anyone. The people we met were so nice and helpful and friendly. Our Polish chef on the boat was fantastic.

An amazing trip. Incredible scenery, beautiful boat, always warm and helpful staff. I'd love to do this one all over again. This was my fourth time with Tripsite and I really appreciated all their help choosing a great trip. Thanks!

Some issues with our room. We booked a room with two twin beds. We got a room with a double bed and bunk beds. The double bed broke the first night. It actually came apart because a brace had fallen off. Our phone charger was broken while trying to fix the bed. Our door lock malfunctioned locking us out of our room for two hours, and was difficult to use the rest of the trip. We asked for the phone charger to be replaced, but never got an answer.

Wow! Last year we did a bike and barge; Koblenz to Saarburg on the Patria and loved it. This tour on the MV Story was even better. Boat was a bit more upscale, food and service was better; and the biking along the Danube was beautiful. The City visits were very good.
The hotel Manager on the boat, Paval, was tremendous. And under his leadership the rest of the staff was also very, very good.
My wife rented an E Bike which was well worth the money. The 21 speed I got was also very nice for a comfort bike.
The other guests were also great!