Italy Tour Reviews — 481 to 510 of 669

Scenery on the day from Santa Maria di Leuca to Otranto was spectacular. Overall excellent trip. Would not hesitate to recommend.

The trip was amazing: excellent food prepared by our 2 chefs; our guide was well-prepared, thoughtful, good-natured; the route was beautifully planned and educational, the bikes were more comfortable than my own, the weather was fortunately perfect, and we had a great group to bike with. The experience went way beyond my expectations . Can’t wait to plan the next biking adventure.

Most Memorable Part: The beautiful scenery of Italy and the connections we made with the other guests!!!

Most memorable part was stopping for lunch in little Italian towns.

Fabulous Trip. Well signposted for being a self guided tour. Hotels great in good locations. Beautiful scenery.

Most Memorable Parts: the swimming off the boat, out in the ocean after a hot bike ride, were amazing.
The historical information from our tour guides was outstanding.
The food was DELICIOUS.
Sunsets out on the water were glorious

Great scenery and a very good vacation. I recommend taking the boat out of Trieste to avoid the traffic.

Everything was excellent! There were a limited number of available rental helmets, I highly recommend bringing one's own from home.

Most Memorable Part: Riding through vineyards and orchards.

What a wonderful week!! Excellent staff...Captain, Helmut, Silvia & Samuele! Food was 5-Star, very comfortable accommodations! Helmut was a great guide, knowledgeable and made sure we all had a good, safe time! Bike riding was so much fun and we saw many different towns and sights we would have missed in a bus! Meeting so many wonderful, fellow bikers from different countries was so enjoyable! This trip was more than I ever expected!! Loved it!! Definitely will travel with Tripsite again!!! Bike On!!!!

Everyday was fabulous. So difficult to pick any one memorable part when you experience Venice, Grana Padana tour and tasting, the oldest clock in the world, a lotus flower lake and charming friendly people and staff.

This was my third bike and barge with Tripsite, but it was not my favorite. The boat, crew and food were terrific. The route however was flat as advertised, but the night stops were not fun or interesting. Zelo had only a cemetery and an Irish pub. If I was asked by a friend which bike and barge to take for possibly a once in a lifetime trip, I would recommend Bruges to Amsterdam and the Mosul River trip first. We had a wonderful time and everyone on the boat and the guests were first rate. I would take another trip on The Ave Maria, but would want a more interesting route.

Friendly knowledgeable staff, delicious food, great bikes! It truly was the vacation of a lifetime, and we can't wait for the next one!

Everything was memorable. I took this trip with my sister not having any expectations. Besides the great accommodations, food & scenery, there were strangers from 8 different countries that became a bike family for 8 days. It was a wonderful trip.

This was a fabulous trip. Truly amazing. The food was the best surprise of the week!! It was delicious!!! Our tour guide Tamara was excellent, she made every day very very interesting. She went above and beyond. Can't wait to do another trip with Tamara!!

Every aspect of the trip made for a memorable experience. Having done both the hotel to hotel and the guided section gave us a truly great opportunity to see a part of Italy that is so varied in both history, culture, food and landscape.

The trip was beautiful and what I would describe as completely worthwhile work/play.

Most memorable: The scenery in Venice, Lodi and Chiogga.

Most memorable: The local tour operator (Good Places) arranged a lunch and wine tasting at a small winery/restaurant. Excellent food, good wines, tour of the winery, interesting lessons about local wines in Croatia, excellent service and a welcoming atmosphere.
Suggestion: We enjoyed staying in the small hotels with atmosphere and a la carte dinners much more than the big resort hotels serving big buffet dinners. So please look for cosy, smaller hotels with atmosphere.

Tour route was beautiful, some costal some inland, hotels and food were excellent, I liked the smaller hotels much better than the large one as the small ones were very personal. Local wines were great. Had so much fun that I'm thinking about the next trip.

Excellent dinners after cycling along some wonderful and varied routes. The tour guides were excellent and kept a great pace for all cyclists. Different activities and surprises along the routes almost every day. Highly recommend this trip. If you plan to travel in July, be prepared for hot weather.

My most memorable part was the daily bike riding thru the beautiful scenery. My only suggestions would be to spend a little list time at the beaches.

The scenery, the biking experience, excellent travel guide, Helmut, the outstanding crew, other bikers and the canals were very memorable. Our only suggestion would be to shorten the time at the beaches.

We were doing the tour "Around Venice". We did not get to finish our tour due to unusual weather, as we had heatstroke on the second day of cycling during an unprecedented heatwave. We continued by train and bus.Therefore, I feel we cannot really make a recommendation about the cycling part of this tour. We were very disappointed as we have never been unable to complete a tour before this. All other aspects of the tour and staff involved along the way were excellent. Our bikes were picked up by the tour company, so we did not have to worry about getting around with them when we weren't feeling well. Hotels were great, and Italy has the best ice cream on the planet! (And due to the heat, we ate quite a bit.) Fortunately it is very easy and inexpensive to get around by bus and train, and we had lots of time in each lovely town to rest and recover, while exploring. This is a really beautiful part of the world.

This trip was a last minute decision. We chose an unguided trip because my wife wanted to maximize her opportunity to speak Italian and we felt comfortable since we have taken an unguided one with Tripsite before. The best part is hard to select- the dinner below Assissi that we learned to cook with the chef, Rosita, in the hotel, the couple sitting next to us at a table in Spello-the woman jumping up every few minutes to hug and kiss her boyfriend while we were eating a fantastic dinner, the sounds of Mozart's Requiem floating out of a small auditorium, sung by 15 young people while we were eating at a fantastic Pizza place in Torgiano. What else? Well, of course the local food, the local wine, the towns in the valley and on top of the hills and the incessantly changing views. We both felt it was a special vacation and we were totally relaxed. Do I have any suggestions? Not really, we are still fighting the bends raising our heads above the memories to our life back here. We'll be back.

We were glad that we did the independent bike ride starting in Bolzano 3 days before meeting up with everyone on the barge. The scenery and biking were incredible, especially on the alternate route. We did go solo the first day and got very lost 3 times! The next day we tagged along with others on the same trip. The directions could be more explicit ( Ex. It would be helpful to state directions that avoided questioning routes i.e. ""go this way, not that way""; caution - fork in road- bear right, but not up that 14% grade hill!) And what is a fly-over? (An overpass, we found out later) And what is considered a ""fountain""? (It's a small water spigot at a bikers rest stop). However, it was an adventure we won't forget. We learned we needed to have GPS through Google or another mapping/biking program. This would allow us to be more independent and ride self guided as biking with 28 or more people and 2 guides is slow going. The biking is on flat terrain, very easy. However, many days you bike around 30 miles, with many stops for breaks, tours, and sights. It was very warm in early June. Bring lip sunscreen and regular sunscreen!
The Ave Maria is fantastic, our rooms were cozy but totally comfortable. The boat is in mint condition. Food is amazing! Our 2 chefs were top notch. Staff are fun and we really were lucky to have a great group of fellow travelers. Ronnie and Silvia were our guides and they were great. They were very patient, helpful and fun to be with. We had a competition one night, all the 5 groups from different countries did a skit. It was hilarious!!
Also, arriving in Venice by boat at the end of the tour is the best way to go in our opinion. We stayed an extra day in Venice and took water buses to some of the islands. It was cooler there, we saw beautiful places and we used up our 3 day transit pass.
I could go on and on, but suffice it to say, we had an unforgettable, wonderful trip and are thinking of where to go on our next bike and barge adventure!

Matera, the town where the bike tour started was an unexpectedly positive surprise and experience: breathtakingly beautiful!!

Not only did the scenery make a life long memory, the friendships we made will always be cherished and kept for another trip. Book early for better hotel stays, sometimes the party gets split up into different hotels and all hotels are not the same. The ability to get in the heart of all the different cities is incredible and would not happen if we had rented a car vs biking from city to city, the highlight city was Bolzano Italy, picture perfect, plenty of highlights to see, the best view was biking down in to lake Garda form the steep hill in Riva breath taking views make sure to pack a bottle opener and pick up some wine and cups for the fairy ride ! We cannot wait to plan our next bike tour.

Great trip. Irene was a great guide. She adopted my suggestion that she wait for the stragglers to catch up to the stopped leaders so the stragglers could have a short rest also. Her suggested side tours were great. Our chefs, Samuel and Enrico were great as well. Superb food. First class trip.

The most memorable part was stopping for lunch in a vineyard!