4 Star Italy Tour Reviews — 31 to 60 of 150

We loved this trip, our first group trip with a guide, and our first biking trip. The guide was knowledgeable and very interactive, and the support staff person thoughtful and proactive. Our guide even shared his traditional music talents, which was an unexpected bonus. The cheese making demonstration and lunch was a highlight, as was staying at a masseria (farm). Good food and great tour stops.

A few tweaks would have made the trip five stars. Some of the bikes had power issues which weren't addressed during the week, and the hotel in Alberobello was not as nice as the others. I wish the last biking day would have had more biking--the other days were full of side trips and culinary/cultural experiences, but the final day seemed to be just a functional direct short ride to our final destination.

Puglia is fascinating, especially the areas around Alberobello. A great place to ride.

Visiting the city of Matera was a truly unique experience. The history and architecture was fascinating. Matera was a great place to begin our adventure through the Puglia region. The food was excellent throughout our tour and great effort was taken to be sure we were served locally grown tasty treats including yummy local wines.

This was the seventh bike/barge tour, in Europe, which I have taken. It was a wonderful tour. The boat, the crew and the guides were among if not the best. In particular the quality and the presentation of the food was outstanding,. I have three suggestions that in my opinion would have made the trip more comfortable. The first is quite minor but most North Americans use a facecloth in the bathrooms, I would prefer this to the two handtowels which were provided for each guest, Secondly, on each of my earlier trips better accommodations were made for guests to dry out light laundry or wet clothing. A clothesline set up on upper patio could work well for this, Finally, my experience is that cycling in a group of 31 is awkward and potentially dangerous. Our two guides worked together very well to control the traffic and allow the whole group to cross major roads safely but two smaller groups would mean shorter traffic delays.
Overall a great trip which I will gladly recommend yo others

Cycling through the smaller rural villages and on rural roads we really enjoyed. The people are really friendly and helpful. It was easy to follow the route with the GPS app supplied. The Baroque villages are fascinating . We especially loved staying in the old city of Syracuse. Well worth spending an extra day here.

We have to add that there is quite a bit of cycling on busy roads which was not that enjoyable.

On the whole though can highly recommend this trip.

The Bike company organizing this trip was amazing. Their attention to detail, interest in our ride, information given, was outstanding. The chosen accommodation was first class, as were the meals that were included. The state of Italian roads was challenging and s few sections of the ride quite uninspiring, but overall we loved the places we stayed at and the journey along the way, especially Polignano, Alberobello and Lecce. A wonderful experience of Puglia.

It was a tough ride, all of the hills was another level. Only take this ride if you are aware that most of the ride is on local roads, with some traffic, and riding up and down hills continually every day. Be careful to conserve your battery, as riding uphill with no power assist is not a good experience (Our story, 2km uphill ride Day 1 into Radda!!) Each night's accommodation was a treat as these towns was especially chosen for us experience the history of Tuscany. So rich in history.

I think Matera is unforgettable. It’s an impressive city. The experience to see how to prepare all those delicious cheese in Noci was amazing. I’d suggest an optional thing for the end of the biketour, that is a Spa Day. It would be nice to have a massage and a relaxing time after all.

This was a well conceived and executed trip; from the baggage handling to the overnight accommodations and the variety of breakfast provided we were pleasantly surprised. The bikes were well maintained and the Ride with GPS was accurate if not sometimes difficult to follow in the cities we visited. A cautionary note: The route from Faenza to Ronta is not for the casual rider! Both the long ascent and the traffic make this an "experienced" rider's ride.

We did the 8 day, Bolzano to Verona trip, with biking beginning at the Resia Pass. Our adult kids joined us for first 5 days (Bolzano to Bolzano), also beginning at the Resia Pass. We loved this trip with just a few low points. First day biking from the Resia pass was absolutely amazing. We weren’t quite prepared for the cooler micro-climate of that area on biking day 1, but the stunning scenery and fun of basically going “weeeee” all the way down the mountain for the first two days was incredible! Then on to quaint and adorable Merano and Silandro. Arriving at the top of the hill en route to the ferry at Lake Garda was breathtaking, and not to be missed! The new Ride GPS app works great!
One thing that could be improved upon is the 5 hour ferry ride. The ferry ride was only pleasing for about the first two hours, but then became incredibly tedious. Because the ferry arrived late at night in Peschiera, we could spend no time there. Chatting with others on the ferry who were doing the same trip, we salivated at some of the towns we saw on Lake Garda and would have been happy to spend time at any of them. Also, biking and staying in Trento fell flat and we’d prefer to spend two nights in Merano, Silandro, on Lake Garda, or even Bolzano and skip Trento. Hotels were varied, with some that were outstanding and some that were marginal. Condition of bikes was great, with the exception of an e-bike dying, but tour company quickly replace it;)

I the whole experience was memorable, but the most exceptional was the food. Danny was truly a chef who was interested in preparing the meals with a purpose. He also kept good eating habits in mind, offering a great variety of vegetables in each meal.

We had the most delightful Guide, Ilenia. She was just beautiful and so considerate and kind. We enjoyed only having 13 riders in the group. On 3 of the days, we were treated to authentic Italian food in little villages or out of the way places. Sadly, the choice of hotel in Lecce proved to be extremely disappointing. The other places we stayed were quite good and one, in particular, at Gallipoli was outstanding. There was quite of bit of road riding at times. The scenery in the Puglia region was average - lots of dead olive trees and in the back streets there is lots of dumped rubbish. Having said that, the trip was excellent and the group we rode with was fabulous.

My wife and I had already taken the trip from Bolzano to Venice.
This year we invited three more couples and did the upper part of the Adige River, which was fantastic!
From Bolzano to Vernona is also a spectacle and, even passing through for the second time, neither the river nor we are the same.
Pure enjoyment, even though I cycled one day with heavy rain.
I highly recommend this tour.

I loved the trip between Trieste and Portoroz.
The hotels were good anywhere. If I Can suggest I would prefer bicycles whit shock absorbers. The roads somethimes were very hard.

The view of the enviorment !! The security of the route and the group of friends were wonderful !!

Good staff in Hotel of Portopalo, good spots to go in Syracuse and Noto, great gastronomy in every city. A great experience overall.
I have one observation, some ways in roads with a lot of traffic + cars/bus fast passing us.
I would do this tour again.

The Lake Garda and Adige river tour was a beautiful ride almost entirely on paved trails so minimal time was spent worrying about cars on the roads. Coming off the mountain down to Lake Garda is an amazing sight and definitely a highlight of the tour. Be sure and download the GPS tracks on your phone because those are the only directions you get.

The entire trip was an insightful and delightful experience, providing access to the heart and soul of everyday-life in "working Italy", versus an antiseptic highlight-reel tour of famous monuments and churches. That said, the overwhelming uniqueness and timelessness of Venice couldn't help but be a highlight. I wouldn't have minded a somewhat more strenuous cycling experience; however, that was more than offset by the enjoyment of the comaraderie of a relatively small tour group (20), forged both on the cycling paths and over fabulous gourmet meals provided by the two young chefs aboard the Vita Pugna.

The general organization of the trip, and the great staff aboard!
Disappointed with the scenery along the routes - often quite monotonous

We cycled through some lovely countryside and saw some very lovely towns. Assisi was wonderful, but understandably busy given its historical importance. We had some very memorable events booked.

Biking by river Po, the visits to the distillery and cheese factory

The staff was amazing, so friendly and very helpful. It was nice to see how they all worked so closely. The food was amazing. Great job.

My favorite part of the trip was touring Montova. This was our 3rd bike barge trip and I'm sorry to say that the scenery we saw while riding 3 of the 5 days was a bit disappointing. The barge and the food was the best of the 3 trips. We also rode a little too much along some busy roads without much of a shoulder.

I loved our guides. They were always available and did all they could to make the trip fun, interesting and successful. They also were attentive to the groups safety. The cities we visited were unique and interesting.

There were several very memorable moments on this trip! Our guide, Hein and his wife Margolien were outstanding with their historical knowledge about every town we toured. That was an added benefit of which I had not expected. They were extremely passionate in sharing their information with everyone which made it so interesting. Another highlight for us was just the sheer beauty that surrounded us on the trails we traversed to each of our destinations. My wife and I are not really bikers but enjoy staying physically fit. She questioned whether she could do the mileage each day. The trails and picturesque views through the countryside took your mind off anything other than just appreciating God’s creation so you were never aware of whether you rode 10 miles or twenty. I could probably go on but will end my remarks with the view we were able to get of Venice as we pulled up to our mooring site on Pellistrina Thursday evening. What an experience. I would recommend to anyone who enjoys biking or just being outdoors. We would definitely do it again but maybe choose a little more difficult ride!!

The time spent touring around
Venice and the food on the boat!

The attention of de guides for sure.
The food was so good too
About of the begining of the travel, when we were buying our trip we didn’t have a good help.

Dinner/wine tasting with Luca and Roberto.

The written route directions could be made a bit clearer. I would suggest you have a native English speaker try riding the routes and make changes as (s)he goes. They were okay but there were a few places where they were difficult to follow. The GPS is definitely helpful but sometimes it lagged so the written directions are needed.

The inland parts: more hilly and definitely a more rocky tandscape.We were disappointed with the Trpsite information we did not receive prior to arriving: no water bottles provided; use of an app on our phone that we barely managed to get to function before heading out. Again Solentobihpkes was fine. They just didn't know what Tripsite had not told us. For navigation we had no reason to not expect a freestanding Garment like device like friends on other trips had. "And, by the way, did you bring a battery pack since the phone will quickly run out of power?" Luckily the tour company had an extra pack for us. Others seemed to have been told about the navigation system and the need for battery pack. They probably books with a different agency.

This was the first bike tour my wife and I had done together. We intentionally chose the Puglia tour because of the moderate daily distances and relatively flat terrain. We went out of our way to choose the guided tour option departing Sep 16 but due to a monumental mistake on my part, we ended up booking our flights at a later date and switched to the Sep 23 self-guided option.

The tour was very enjoyable. We were fortunate in that the weather was clear and the temperatures mostly moderate, with only a short interlude of rain on one of the days. Some of the riding was by the coast, but much of it was slightly inland, amongst olive tree groves and small, quaint Apulian towns. The hotels were satisfactory, the reserved dinners were generally very good, and the reserved breakfasts were acceptable. The self-guided option worked out very well, the maps were easy to follow, and it would likely become our default approach in future. We did meet a number of others along the way, running into each other at recommended stops on the route, at the hotels or at reserved restaurants.

The bikes (my wife on an e-bike, me on a regular hybrid) were in very good condition and the local tour company and their staff were very helpful and service-oriented. The Tripsite staff was also very helpful in providing information and getting us booked, and despite all of their fair warnings that we would lose our payment if we cancelled our trip after a certain date, were happy to accommodate our request to change from the Sep 16 guided option, for which we had paid a high season supplement, to the Sep 23 self-guided option, for an additional fee. Bearing in mind that this was due to a mistake on my part, we appreciate that they made the change, though we would have saved a significant amount of money if we had gotten things right in the first place!

Overall, happy to recommend the region, the tour, and both the local provider and Tripsite.

(Side note for those who follow a vegan / WFPB diet: I was able to get by with fava bean purée with chicory, grilled vegetable side dishes, pizza, pasta, and lots of bread with olive oil!)

I loved the self guided part as we were able to ride as far as we wanted to and stop when we wanted. The scenery from Bolzano to Peschiera was breathtaking. The towns looked like movie sets. The 5 hour ferry ride was also an adventure and exposed the most beautiful scenery imaginable.

The barge crew was great, especially Stephi and Stephani, our fearless guides. Francesco was also a huge help. My room was tiny, but I made it work. The only complaint, and it is minor, is that I have had better food on bike barge excursions. The food on this trip was okay. Not great. Also - need more salads!!