4 Star France Tour Reviews — 31 to 60 of 226

Biking in the Mosel wine region watching grape harvest.
Exploring the city of Trier was a highlight.

The food, the staff, and the perfect mix of strangers from around the world exceeded our expectations. The cookbook also a nice surprise souvenir that we now keep on our coffee table. Mikky is an excellent guide, for many reasons! The bikes are solid!
Suggestions, nothing major, simply notes to help things out:
1) a reminder in the morning to bring money for entrance fees. No problem with them not being included in the trip cost, I simply could have used a reminder. The situation was handled fine, but would prefer to avoid asking people for a loan.
2) please consider making and showing a short video RE how to be a “corner”; corner positioning, what/who to look for, when to leave your post. perhaps consider a longer video that covers all the biking etiquette, such as safe distance between bikes, traffic signals, etc.
To explain my 4 rating; I simply didn’t come to understand how small the room was until entering it. I looked at room pictures and measurements and considered them. When we entered our room it our new reality became obvious. This is not our first bike and barge trip. The largest boat we have been on held 24 guests. However, this is the smallest room we have stayed in. Going forward we now know what we are considering when seeing these room measurements and layouts, and we will likely avoid them going forward. We understand the rooms cannot be changed, simply explaining our 4 rating.

My wife and I traveled on the Magnifique 1 from October 1, 2024 to October 7, 2024. We absolutely loved the staff; very friendly and helpful. The stop in Trier, with a guide, was great. The food on board was pretty good but the bikes were not. They were quite heavy and had too few gears, which made climbing even moderate hills quite difficult.

What a great way to explore several cities by bike! If you're seeking fun, exercise, meeting other like minded cyclists, this is a must do!

Biking riding component.

The gluten free option was absolutely not satisfactory. When arriving it was not noted. The chef said we had to come see him. We paid 120 euros and we only received two pasta meals and bread for lunch and a cookie jar. The bread put out was 2 slices for each gf person. The rest could have as much as they wanted. The shopping should have been done before hand in Paris where there are gf bakeries not the same stuff we can buy. We got what was in the pantry.
One meal we got baked apples for dessert. How are 2 pastas, 2 slices of bread per day and a baked apple worth 120E? It is totally not appropriate to charge so much after already paying a lot for the trip. It seems like a cash grab as there were three of us. Whomever makes this decision should be ashamed of themselves. Fair $ for fair service. We should all be reimbursed!

The small towns that we went into were amazing. The trails and trail maps were perfect and the bike we were given were great. They were smooth riding and handled great.

The riding and sights we saw as we rode. Our tour guides we awesome and the boat staff were too.
The food was first class and the new friends unforgettable.

We have 1 complaint. The room and storage were insufficient. It looks like they designed the renovation on looks alone and not practicality.

We had a wonderful week on the Clair de Lune. The barge is small and the cabins tiny but when we went through the locks with less than an inch to spare, the width was understandable. The captain, Marco, was delightful. He spent time with us every evening and improved the quality of our trip with his presence. Dick, our guide, has excellent and has a great sense of humour!
Food was good. Highlights included visiting the Abbey de Fontmorigny and meeting its owner, Dominique, and visiting le Château de Meauce. A special experience was being taken inside the private and beautifully renovated living space of Cèdric & Séverine Mignon! The crew adapted well the the changes necessitated by damage to the canal near Briare. The bike paths as well designed and maintained and I felt very safe travelling on them. I’d highly recommend this type of a holiday.

Staff, food and biking experience were all first class. Rooms on Manufique 1 were small and needed more shelf space to put small things. Small round stool should be replaced with a small table with drawers. Air conditioning was broken down for last 3 days of the trip. Small rooms were therefore hot for sleeping. Beverage prices were very reasonable. The staff were really great. Would book again but maybe on a larger boat in their fleet..

First day as we cycled to Sancerre it was a trip of high hills, made manageable with ebikes. The views were spectacular! Visits to two chateaus were memorable.

Annita is a great tour guide! She made special arrangements to get us into chateau that weren't open when we were in the area. Most of the small towns we went through on our rides were closed up during the hours we were there (12-2) making it a challenge to find points of interest beyond the scenery. We did go to a lovely Goat Cheese Shop and did a great cheese tasting. It would be good to add a wine tasting in Sanserre to the itinerary of this trip.

The staff on the Clair de Lune were fantastic, funny and hard working. The food was beautifully prepared, nutritious and delicious. I enjoyed the visit to goat cheese farm, moving through the locks, exploring beautiful old towns and traveling in a bridge canal over the Loire River. A couple of days were less interesting. Don’t forget your rain jacket.

All the team of "Claire de Lune" was wonderfull. All the dinners on the boat were excellent, and the experience when the boat stopped on the floodgates were funny and very interesting. The tour in bikes it´s very nice and advisable. Many thanks at all.

Overall the trip was great. The communication with the bicycle supplier was a bit lacking. The bikes just appeared with no personal contact.

The Hotel L'Auberge Normande in Carrentan needs to be reevaluated. It is a very dismal place. The people were fine, but the accommodations are run down and bottom class. I do not recommend placing anyone there ever.

Boat, bikes, Crew, food, cabins, and service were fantastic. Memorable was the villages visited. I just wish we had more focus on the history of the places visited as well as the wines of the region. We had to do that by ourselves, I was glad the GPS app used work great and we could ride on our own.

The crew was supportive, professional, personable, friendly, and quick to respond. The meals were delicious and better than most restaurants ! Our bike guide was knowledgeable, supportive, funny, and adaptive to our needs as cyclists. It often felt like we were a family. The scenery from the bike and barge was beautiful. I often felt Mersey in the culture of the small villages we passed though.

The guides were very good. Some of the bikes needed to be replaced Definite bike problems

Great scenery; safe ridding;
We should have stayed an extra day touring around St Emillion.

The site that inspired van gogh’s stary night.
We didn’t see as many lavender fields as thought

Due to flooding, it was cancelled. We were put on similar boat and trip. Is there a price difference between the two trips ? Mainz to Heidelberg on Olympia was the substitute trip

The Provence region of France is exquisitely beautiful, and biking is very much a part of French life. Everywhere we went, we saw beautiful medieval villages and gorgeous countryside. However, my strong suggestion would be to encourage E-bike rentals. Although we are strong bikers, the hills we encountered made it very difficult to get to some of our destinations. Also, the App we used in order to access our daily riding maps was not user-friendly and we had a difficult time following it.

The crew was great and the food was excellent. The bikes were good.

The route, due to detours had its challenges

We cruised with the crew of the Zwaantjze from Epernay to Paris. The captains (Barry and Eric), the chef (Frank) and first mate, Brendo were friendly and highly competent. The cabins are tiny, but comfortable. The quality of the bikes was excellent to poor. My bike was fine, however, the bike my husband had, which was a large frame, had no rear brakes. Even though there were only 7 guests, there was not another bike available for him larger than a small. The small bike had faulty electric assist, it did not work consistently. He was not happy about that. Our guides were wonderful people, but we do not understand the decision your company made to assign three people who were not familiar with the route or the history of the area. On two previous tours we have taken with your company, the guides offered extraordinary insights about the history and architecture of all the towns we visited. That info was not offered on this tour. We suggest you prepare a short video to be shown each night describing the towns and the types of roads that will be ridden on the following day. That would greatly enhance the experience.

Food on boat (ship ) as they refer to it was wonderful. Chef was full of energy and very creative

Beauty of the Dordogne region. Great pull-offs for picnicking every day. Lascaux caves and museum, brilliantly well done!! Don’t miss it. Also, a last minute side trip to Les Eyzies prehistoric museum! Also fantastic!

Lascaux Caves were unbelievable, as were the cliff dwellings and Natural History museum in Les Eyzies. Sophie was inccredible, always responding in a timely fashion with our questions and concerns. My bike seat kept sliding down, and I had to stop many times a day to raise it again. The biggest dissatisfaction was not having audible cues with our road navigation system. And it wouldn’t tell you that you were off course right away, so often we found ourselves turning around. The food was very difficult if you were a vegetarian and after riding bikes all day, we would have liked to have eaten before 8 o’clock at night. I know you don’t have control of that, but, just saying…

The biking itself and the dinners and stay at L’ostal de Pombonne
We were glad we took an e yea day in Bergerac.
We would have liked to receive the detailed booklet with information about sites to see on the route much earlier than our arrival in Bordeaux! We would have planned differently
For others: be aware you have to reserve a spot at each Lascaux cave. We didn’t know this, and unfortunately we’re not able to go to any of them.

1. The excellent, cheerful leadership by Helmut
2. The meals
3. The many fine trails, especially around Avignon. Wonderful biking.

The memorable part of the trip were the WWI sites including the beaches, American cemetery, and the German fortifications. If you plan to go to Point du Hoc to see the cliffs the army rangers climbed, note the navigation tool does not include this add on. We traveled on some scenic roads to get there and then heading to Omaha Beach found a bike path along the cliffs that took us right to Omaha Beach. This was actually backwards because we did not want to be at the beach at high tide. So if you are traveling the route the suggested way you will find the path to Point du Hoc at the end of Omaha Beach. We stayed in Bayeux and loved the town with its great restaurants. The navigation tool was a bit of a hassle because had to keep going out and coming back into the ap to see whether or not we were still on the route. Even so it was a great trip. Oh and highly recommend the e-bikes because where most of the ride was fairly level, we encountered some pretty long hills several times.

This is a beautiful region and accessing it from the river trails is wonderful . The boat was very comfortable and the wonderful staff met our every need with a smile . We had rainy days , and closures due to local holidays which impacted our visits to small town restaurants and shops . I would avoid national holiday weeks in future .
My suggestions to improve this already wonderful trip :
- have bike storage racks that allow a little more deck space for sitting out .
-eliminate the hot tub , it’s only used by a few and takes up too much deck space .
-