Italy Tour Reviews — 601 to 630 of 694

Sometimes it would have been nice to stop for pictures of the scenery, but did not want to go to the back of the pack or be left behind. Helmut was an excellent guide and made sure everybody was safe. Food on board was the best I had in Italy. Staff very friendly and went the extra mile for our friends birthday.

We should have trained more for endurance. The guides were wonderful and took such good care of us. The bicycles were amazingly comfortable. Beautiful dinners nightly. Thank you all.

This was our second Tripsite trip, last year Germany, this year Italy. I have highly recommended your trip to all my friends. We hope to have the opportunity to take another bike and barge.

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!

Fourth trip with tripsite, all good and we keep coming back! Map books and directions have been the only things needing improvement, nothing we couldn't figure out but some confusion arose, eg getting out of Munich, some directions on the Resiapass Bolzano routes, to name two, otherwise no complaints.

Green Hills of Abruzzo should probably be listed as moderate rather than easy to moderate.

We've experienced three Bike and Boat Tour in the past 15 months, and have already booked another for 2016. We absolutely love this mode of travel and the fact that it offers an active holiday, and the best of both site-seeing and exploring the countryside in a way that most other tours simply can not. We love sharing our experience with like-minded international travelers, and find we are extremely well treated by boat staff and guides.Together with the Tripsite staff, the website is a fabulous tool for selecting a holiday in that it allows us to compare boats, distances and routes. As a secondary benefit we find the Bike and Boat Tours offered by Tripsite to be excellent "value for money". We have recommended Tripsite to several friends and acquaintances, some of whom will be joining us on our next tour as "first-timers".

Traveling from Venice through northeast Italy and Trieste into Slovenia and Croatia was beautiful and culturally rich.

The trip was great but the route was less than expected. The route was too much bike trails away from villages. We will definitely recommend Tripsite but not this trip. We look forward to our next trip with you guys.

Great guides made the trip for us. Allowing 2 bike groups with different strengths was the best way.

We have done 8 trips with Tripsite. All trips were great.

Ave Maria, as well as 3 previous trips on the Merljin, superb. Some guides on Merjijn were mediocre, but Hein is incredible guide/person. Friends have recently taken B/B Red Hat?, bad experience. The above 4 trips speak highly of your program. Looking forward to next trip, F2017.

We loved this trip! It was so fun for our family of four. Our two boys, ages 11 & 14, enjoyed biking and stopping off to swim in the ocean, trying new delicious food, and learning from our wonderful guide, Fabio. The boat was very nice and the crew were lovely.

We had record setting beat the week we were there and yet still had a fantastic trip. The rooms stayed reasonably cool with the AC-- that was a life saver to have available.

If I had to change anything, I'd probably like to have the boat docked closer to Venice proper so it would be more accessible on arrival and through the first couple days. We made it work-- all a good adventure. The scenery on the bike route was relaxing-- not terribly dramatic, but really nice for small town explorers, birders, and those who enjoy farmland/pastoral scenery.
Pros: delicious food, easy cycling terrain, excellent City/town tours, comfortable rooms, great value, easy logistics when you don't have to move your stuff each day, meeting nice people from all over the world.
Cons: weather was exceedingly hot in July (but would do it again anyway!)

We had a fantastic time on the Ave Maria and we're lucky to have Hein as our guide.....great guy!

Garda Bike Hotel was terrific. The staff could not have been more friendly and accommodating. The rooms are quite nice and the hotel is very well maintained. The food at the hotel is prepared with athletes in mind: healthy, low sodium, and quite good. Not only would I recommend this trip, I am an evangelist of it.

A charming trip. Loved the experience. Hope to do more bike touring with Tripsite. My blog submission offers lots more positives. Thanks for publishing it! ; )

Now, if you really want some constructive criticism to share with Girolibero, here it is: Cue sheets were not up to date in a number of areas, which caused confusion and back-tracking. One of the days included a long stretch on a major highway, which was not too pleasant. The hotel in Belluno required that we haul our bikes up a long flight of stairs for overnight storage, and there was no elevator big enough or any staff available to help. ; { The tandem bike provided was bigger/heavier than what we have at home, or what we expected. We are experienced cyclists, and we wished that there was an option for pedal cages or clips to give us some leverage on the hills. The gears on the tandem slipped regularly during climbs and the chain got stuck a few times. The brakes failed one day on a steep downhill, but thankfully we were able to pull into an uphill driveway to avoid disaster! It took awhile to reach anyone about that, but when we did a mechanic was sent to the next hotel to fix the brakes on the evening of that failure so that was helpful. Overall, it was a wonderful experience, but these are just some ways it could have been a little better. Thanks for asking!

We have been on seven or eight bike and barge trips in the past and this one was, by far, the best. From the greeting upon arriving, to the spacious and comfortable accommodations and exquisite food. The guide was pleasant and very informative ( great sense of humor, too ) Our hotel reservations in Venice were cancelled at the last minute, but he was able to get us a room. The Ave Maria is a beautiful boat with everything you need. We can't say enough about every crew member. Part of the scenery was not as nice as on other trips, but that couldn't be helped. People at Tripsite were always very helpful and quick to respond. We had a wonderful time. We will highly recommend this Tripsite adventure!

During my trip I didn't obtain the maps and associated documents which made parts of my trip extremely frustrating.

My last trip cycling experience with the Dory Hotel in Riccioni Italy was splendid and one of the best ever!!

Route guides(arrows)could in some areas(particularly in the Bolzano to barge section when riders on their own) be more clearly marked and better positioned.
Steph,our guide,and the boat crew combined to make this a special experience.

I love our leader Michaela and we want to do another trip with her. I have recommended the Pugna boat Mantova-Venice trip to many people.

We enjoyed the trip and we're pleased it was geared to our level of ability. We have recommended it to many friends. We will likely organize a group to go on one of your trip in the future.

Alex was amazing. She was so informative, hard-working and enjoyable to be around. The staff on our boat were excellent as well.

Our tour guide Marco was ok, but not outstanding. His commentary was adequate, but we got more from the notes provided.

Tedious farm land, 30 mile an hour winds. Our guide and staff were fabulous! Put them on a little more picturesque route and I would say yes. Marco was absolutely wonderful!

The hotel in Volterra was just OK but the location made up for it! The food at the hotel was terrible! We loved our stay in Montecatini and Sienna and the food was as good as we had hoped for.

The Amalfi coast section of biking was along the main roads driven by large local buses and the other tourist traffic was very heavy - although the drivers were not mean or aggressive, it was very unnerving to be biking on such busy roads. The guide seemed to be surprised that the traffic was still so heavy the 2nd week of September.

The boat anchored in Amalfi on the 3rd night, in an unprotected harbor - the boat rocked and banged all night long, no one including the crew was able to sleep, and apparently this was not an uncommon experience when in the Amalfi harbor.

On day 4, after an extremely hot day of biking we reached the boat in Cetara. For some reason, the boat was anchored along side the sister boat, not next to the pier. The crew made us wait in the hot sun until the bikes were hoisted on to the sister boat, then situated the bikes on our boat before allowing us to get on our boat to shower or get something to drink. AND since we were not next to the pier, to get from the sister boat to our boat the crew had us step up on the railing of the sister boat then step on the railing of our boat then down to the deck. Although they were assisting us, it was definitely an accident waiting to happen and totally unnecessary. On our Croatian trip in the Dalmation Islands, this type of parallel boat anchoring was common, but the boats utilized the openings in the railings to allow us to walk through the boats...

The captain fell and injured himself during this bike hoisting situation, and was certainly in pain when we finally got on the boat, but he was very rude to another passenger who commented about the inappropriateness of loading the bikes first and the ""rail balancing"" access to the boat.

Capri was a crowded disappointment, not worth the stop. Naples was also not worth the stop, large, dirty, crowded, the walking tour was not very interesting. On the positive side the Amalfi coast was absolutely beautiful and we really enjoyed the islands of Ischia and Procida with their quiet roads and small peaceful little towns.

"The ""recommend this trip (Tyhrennian Sea)"" question is a difficult question to answer. Scenery is great. Pompeii great. Guide good. Some passengers had issues with the Capt. At the end of our third day out we were secured to our sister boat in such a way that we had to walk across the railings (not on deck) to transfer to our vessel. It was unsafe, and honestly, uncomfortable for the women. When a few of our female passengers shared their opinion with the Capt he dismissed their concerns. In fairness, he had slipped and broken several ribs while handling bikes and was probably not in the best mood. When we finished biking on this same day (very hot) the crew/guide made all of us wait while they loaded the bikes. We all thought that was odd. They did not offer an explanation. The scenery was very good, guide was a nice guy and very knowledgeable. The crew was mixed. Cook & first mate great. Barista not so much. Capt....I don't know. After his accident he left to recover. Forgot about our second night. The harbor was unprotected from the prevailing wind direction and we rocked on 2-3 waves all night. No one slept-crew included. I told Marilyn if we encounter another night like that I was getting a room. It was miserable. The rest of the anchorages were fine. After writing this I changed my survey answer from Yes to No. I would send them to Metz if they want easy biking and Croatia for difficult.

On the plus side...The Metz (Merlijn 2013) & So Dalmatia tours (San Snova 2015) was excellent in every way. Crew, boat, scenery, guides. We'll return to Europe but events in Paris probably have many of us thinking about different options.

We were self-guided for 3 days. The road guides given us were written for bike riders using a GPS. No GPS was provided. Thus, the guides were a bit confusing. We didn't notice the odometers (and they were not pointed out to us during our orientation) on our bikes until it was too late. We should have attempted to track our mileage against the miles listed from point to point in the guide book. Instead, we followed the advice we were given during orientation, which was to just follow the green arrows. We got very lost one day. We followed the arrows in the wrong direction! We should have paid more attention to the road guide. It might be good to update the guides if GPS's are not going to be provided.

Personally I would have preferred another day of biking and a day less in Venice - If people wanted to see Venice they could stay an extra day or so after.