4 Star Slovakia Tour Reviews — 1 to 30 of 160

The scenery and the historical cities were so wonderful. Especially loved the last day of biking through wine country and small villages. Food was excellent, and accommodation was comfortable. Only complaint would be the lack of clear, English directions during our information sessions each evening. A guide out on the course would be recommended.

Scenery was great bikes where good boat was excellent would have been bocce if helmets could have been provided or rented as hard to pack and carry one to Europe .

The first day and last day of biking were beautiful. The route the other days weren’t as nice.
The boat staff were wonderful and the food was delicious.
Only downside was having to be on the boat for a certain time as the boat moved all night long. I prefer the tours when the boat moves as we bike and stays in port all night. Nice for after dinner walk in towns.

Guides were great. Trip was very educational. Side tours were great even in the rain. Would to have more time to spend in each city. One day is just not enough to enjoy the local flavors.

This was our 2nd self-guided bike tour in Europe. It was a little different than our first where everyone leaving from our hotel was on the same schedule. With this company, you are basically customizing your tour by chosing to stay extra nights in some cities. The route chosen by the local company was qood. We had a variety of small villages and towns, crop fields and forrests. Lodging in the Category B hotels was good to excellent. The cycle paths were very good most of the time with little mixing with cars. We did this in Sept and it seemed alot of restaurants/cafes along the route were closed, so you might bring a lunch with you. The bikes were good, but do not have mirrors, which I had inquired ahead about. We did bring our own.

Liked the disco night. The fourth ride was beautiful.
Meals were also good and super service.
My e-bike was too heavy for me- suggest a more compact and less heavy bike for smaller women. Also, we had wanted to book a guide for the 9 of us and there were only 2 on this boat. We would have enjoyed having one to eliminate getting lost and also helping us find fun locations to stop enroute. We did this on our Italian trip and it made a large difference to our enjoyment.
Your staff are very helpful and pleasant. Well done overall.

Staff was amazing, wanted to help and please you al the time. Food was good. Meat portions could have been a bit bigger since we need lot’s of protein to bike. We need non guided and I would not do that again, missed the knowledge of the area that a guide provides.

I would strongly recommend taking the guided tour as opposed to non guided. The app to use is very average and doesn’t give you any information along the ride.

the boat, service and routes. we'd have preferred to have more time in viena and budapest

Our group truly enjoyed the week on the Vivienne. The bike trails were well maintained and routes well marked which enabled us to enjoy the amazing scenery each day. The staff on Vivienne was incredible.
Two complaints were the e-bikes were very heavy
and there were no water bottle holders on the regular bikes.

Biking along the Danube bend. Beautiful shaded path, interesting scenery. Catching last minute standing tickets to the Staatsopera in Vienna was amazing! Coming into Bratislava while a Trans-Danube Swim was occurring was a unique experience. Great meal at a hotel recommended restaurant (etterum) in Mosonmagyaróvár. The bikes were adequate for our 200 mile journey. I only wish I had a water bottle holder on mine.

Biking the Wachou valley, outside Vienna. It was an incredible ride, with great places to stop along the way. The trip was great, the crew handled all those bikes great. Would have liked more time in some of the cities, and more diet options.
But, that’s being kinda picky, it was a great trip and would recommend.

The room on the boat was lovely and the food was very good. We did a guided tour and I felt our guide was inexperienced She did not have many safety measures that I have had on previous bike trips. i.e a sweep and ensuring everyone is ready to go before taking off. Also would have been better to be able to visit some cultural places like the Abbey, museums or churches. We were not given anytime on our rides to do this. The highlights was the wine region and wine tasting.

It was a great trip overall. We loved that part of the route also went inland a little through villages etc.

It would be great to have more lunch/food options marked on the maps and how to make sure they are open.

We also noticed that on the last bike day parting the route was over a blocked off and hard to ride dike so we were forced to find our way around via a main road.

It was well organized as nd we would do something similar again.

Klarà, our principal guide was awesome! She was always handy, solved all issues with a big smile on her face. Martin and Toni also very good but they left us in Vienna. Fine scenery, hotels, food, weather, etc...

Only one pitfall: we got other 2 guides after Vienna. One of them did not have a guide attitude, one example: the group that do not speak the local language was struggling to make the other in a restaurant and he was not helpful at all, he just got a beer for himself and walked out of the place. If you need more detail, please contact me.

The trip was exactly as promised and more. The chosen bike routes were very scenic, appropriate distances and gave us a great flavour of Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. The bikes were good quality and in excellent shape - top marks. The food was outstanding! Lots of food choices, special menus to highlight local foods and top quality ingredients. The Primadonna is a gorgeous boat, and our room was just as lovely as the advertising showed. One special highlight was using the boat to do a night tour of Budapest - the most beautiful city I have ever seen.

Most people on the trip were German, with a mixture of Dutch, French. There were only a few Americans and Canadians. The boat staff were mostly Serbian. That meant that there were inevitable language issues. For example, we paid 100 Euros to do a night bus tour of Vienna in English. But some German, Duthc and French travellers ended up on the bus too, so our tour guide ended up having to repeat all tour instructions in 4 languages, which was frustrating and inefficient. In the same vein, every evening we had briefings on the following days cycling trip. Our Serbian hotel manager did his best, but the information was often confusing, and the maps provided by Danau Tours were pretty average. This led to a number of wrong turns and navigation mix ups over the week.

In North America, we are used to having water provided free of charge when dining. So it felt cheap that we were asked to pay 7 Euros for a bottle of water at meals. Considering the cost of the trip, that didn't sit right. To be fair, we traveled around Europe after the trip, and we never encountered free water in restaurants, so it appears that is a European norm.

Lastly, although it is called a 4-country tour, you only cycle in 3 countries: Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. The only time you set foot in Germany is in Passau at the start and end of the week. So if you want to tour Germany, plan in time before or after the trip.

We had such a great time on our trip & thank Leslie for his leadership & organization to make it fantastic! We had a junior suite as we booked early & it was perfect! The food was very good, the ship very clean and all the staff were friendly & helpful.

The only 2 suggestions would be:
1 - the bike app needs to be upgraded or tweeked as people were having trouble downloading & our phones were dying to quick using the app. Also, everyone should get one for free.

2- please put water bottle holders on the bikes! I drink a lot of water & find it hard to put in blue holder & the water kept leaking (on my phone!)
Also, a nice touch would be souvenir water bottles from the boat owners :)

All in all, a super trip! Thank you

The night cruise around the city of Budapest with everything lit up was glorious.

Our tours in Budapest on the bus was with an exceptional tour leader. She brought the city alive with all the history and beautiful locations we visited. Very passionate about her city. The walking tour in Bratislava was Wonderful. Daca gave a well thought out tour of the city center-absolutely the best.
Our biggest issue was the language, even when bike tours were explained in English we did not always understand certain words.

Our waiter Uros, gave us exemplary service. Very professional, friendly, helpful. Always looking out for us
All crew members were top notch

I especially liked the ability to bike through farmlands, quaint country villages, vineyards, apple orchards and see old castles, church spires, rolling hills in the background and of course, the beautiful Danube river was always on our side. Most of all though, was the chance to visit Bratislava, Budapest, Vienna and Munich on foot and enjoy the different food offerings and beers!
We did do the excursion into Budapest at night and that was fabulous. Seeing the three bridges all lit up and riding around Pest after having goulash and watching the dinner show of dancers and musicians was lovely, I'd do it all over again!

The trip was fantastic and well worth doing - highly recommend. The cycle route was wonderful and the hotels were all great.
The paper maps, app and instructions for getting between towns were excellent and very detailed (with one exception, see below), but the instructions for navigating from the end of each day's route to your hotel for the night were not clear or sufficient, and on occasion, missing entirely. This unfortunately meant that after 2-3 hours of relaxed, lovely cycling through fields, castles, ruins etc, each day ended with 40 stressful minutes trying to find the hotel.
The first day's route gave an alternative option for anyone staying in Petronell-Carnuntum, rather than cycling all the way to Bad Deutch-Altenburg on the north side of the river and then 30min back to Carnuntum, an option was given of taking the ferry across the river at Orth an der Donau and then "following the cycle path to Carnuntum" - this advice was not sufficient, as there was no signposted cycle path on the south side of the river. I ended up catching a train to Carnuntum rather than cycle on a busy main road.
I was also given an incorrect time and date for the briefing session, and had to find my way to a different hotel in Vienna in order to attend a briefing session (it turned out all briefing sessions over a 2 day period had been wrongly communicated to all travellers, and the poor driver was having a very hard time of it).
Lastly, the tickets for the train and boat that I was issued were for incorrect dates, but I'm pleased to say that the company sorted this out very quickly and sent replacement tickets for the correct dates on to one of the hotels along my route, which was good service.
I liked the fact that both a map app and paper maps with detailed written instructions were provided, as the app drained my phone battery very quickly so it was good to have the paper maps and directions as well.
I would still recommend this trip very highly, but I hope that better directions to the hotels (and the alternative route on day 1) can be provided to future travellers.

The biking was scenic and beautiful. The best biking was in Budapest and then in Austria on the last day. It was an experience I will never forget.

The itenarary was very good. Unfortunately the heavy rains did some of the distances a bit difficult.
I must however point out that the bikes where not up to standard. On arrival several bikes where actually broken. If it had not been for our excellent Guide Victor, it may have been a disaster.

The maps were more helpful than the written directions. All hotels were excellent, rooms, service and food. The bikes were quite heavy for the distances involved. The women did not like the seats, rubbed their lady parts the wrong way. Questions were answered quickly through What’s App. Inform riders than many restaurants in Europe are closed on Sundays. Have a map that shows where the hotel(s) are located. Considering the Danube flooding conditions, the staff responded quickly, but it would have been nice to be better informed each morning about changing conditions.

The scenery was beautiful, very memorable. The staff was excellent, accommodating and professional. Thank you for that. The e-bikes were great, and definately made riding fun. Unfortunately, due to flooding on the Danube, we did not get to experience important parts of the trip. The staff did their best to make up for this, but we did miss out on anticipated stops and excursions.

Passau to vienna was amazing. Great bike trails and incredible scenery.

We were looking forward to enjoying this well-planned out trip, mostly on well-maintained cycle paths, but the weather had different ideas! All started out great in Vienna on a warm and sunny day. Our hotel in Vienna was pleasant and the trip guide / Austrian partner, was very helpful and patient with the many travelers needing his guidance. But then Storm Boris hit with torrential rains and strong winds! We struggled through mostly wet and rainy days. However, we got great support in changing out our bikes, due to mechanical and ergonomic issues when we arrived in Bratislava. There certainly were some very enjoyable moments, especially the hotels and food (we chose the half board option) but we cut our riding short on the fifth day to avoid additional days of rain and cooler temperatures. The local partner helped us with securing a hotel in Budapest a day early and with a train ticket from Komarom to Budapest. We know that our trip would have been totally amazing had the weather cooperated! There was no way to predict the unexpected 10-year deluge in Central and Eastern Europe.

Budapest and Vienna were fabulous cities to see. I would suggest that more info, printed the day before on bike routes be given out to everyone. The info meetings were hard to get all of the details and minimal route information changes. Also, bike routes for each day should be based on temperature and wind direction with advisories about how much water to bring along, where to get more. The bike route that was suggested for Bratislava was terrible: prior information on the 30 mph wind gusts that we headed back towards the boat in and 90 degree temperatures made the trip difficult and dangerous: my husband almost suffered from heat stroke and we could not find any place on route to get water after making the return after the bridge crossing.

.The trip was well managed by Lesley.He was great. The boat staff were not very helpful so that was a bit frustrating at times.Food was good. Lots of activites. Biking was fabulous.

Vienna and Budapest at night. Coffee and cake at 1600. Breakfast buffet. Large lager.

Our favorite parts of the trip was the day in Budapest and also the last day of riding. The scenery and stops were all beautiful.
While the daily itinerary sessions with the cruise director were well done and informative the timing should be rotated between the different language groups. The other group was larger and therefore always ran longer than planned.
We found the bikes to be of good quality but you may need another crew member to service them after each ride. We pointed out that there was an issue with my wife’s bike but on the next ride the front brake was still rubbing. Also another member of our group’s chain was quite noisy. Still dealing with these bikes is a massive job and I give the crew full credit.