pwcfan

Good day to all.
Wifey and I are strongly considering a biking vaca.
Looking at bike/cruise or just biking/hotel.
Any particular tour companies you all would suggest ?
We are thinking Italy for bike/hotel.
Or, Danube/Rhine for bike/cruise.
We are nubes. I am a bike commuter, prox 120 miles per week. Wife, prox 50 miles per week. Very little climbing for either of us.

Open to all suggestions.

Thank you all in advance for your help.

2ering

Hi. We really enjoy doing an organized tour in the spring as a way to aid in training, and get in some hill work, before taking a self-contained tour in the late summer/early fall. It's nice to let someone else do all the planning, especially when overseas. We have used Backroads(3), REI Travel(1) and VBT(2). The cost per day, high to low, is in that order as well. With Backroads' "Premier" designated trips you likely will have a dinner or two in a Michelin starred restaurant, stay at fabulous resorts and have some great cultural excursions. However, don't think that the amenities with the other two organizations are in any way deficient as they are not. In fact, the other people on the trip and the guides have a larger impact on the enjoyment of the trip, and in that regard we rank the VBT trips highest. That said, Backroads having a professor from the University of Bordeaux come and give us a lunchtime talk on human evolution before personally taking us through the caves at Les Eyzies to view the pre-historic paintings has been the singular most memorable and moving event of our trips.

Here is a web site that you can use to compare various companies. Bike Tour Reviews.

Good Luck,

Philly Tandem

For the Danube, there are several very good tour companies that offer "self guided" tours. They book the hotels and transfer your bags each day, and you bike on your own. This is how most of the Europeans I've met do it (well, the ones that don't do it on their own). They are usually pretty reasonably priced, too.

Check out https://www.austria-radreisen.at/en/home.html for example.

That said, if you don't go in high season then doing it on your own is pretty simple, as long as you don't mind carrying bags on your bike. There are tons of lodgings available in each town along the Danube, as well as trains along most of the route if you want to bail out.

We just rode in August from Passau to Vienna with our son, and didn't pre-book anything. Worked fine.

fietsbob

I noted when there, It was possible to Ride down the Danube , say to Vienna And Budapest,
then take the Many ferrys back Upstream to where you started. [Passau?]

Viking river cruises ('advertising' on PBS) showed one (their site) that went up the Rhine and down the Danube.

but that is all on the water no shore & levee cycling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%...93Danube_Canal






./.

Tourist in MSN

I did two REI travel bike tours, Prague to Budapest and Lisbon to Granada.

The Prague to Budapest one had less climbing of the two. Everybody in group rode the full route. The bikes had a small back rack, I brought from home a small pannier that came in handy to carry my rain gear, etc.

The Lisbon to Granada one, they provided GPS units that had the track built in so you could easily see where each turn was which made staying on course easier. But this route had serious hills. There were a few people that sag wagoned parts of this route due to hills. The bikes did not have racks but had a small handlebar bag. But the bag was too small to hold rain gear, I got totally soaked one day.

I enjoyed both trips. I went early and did sightseeing for a few days before each trip, that also gave me time to get my time zones straightened out. I asked REI which hotels they used at the start and end. Made my own reservations for the extra days, several in the group did the same.

If you do the REI trips, get an REI credit card. You get a 5 percent kickback on purchases at REI which includes travel. I think that REI might cancel trips if they get less than four signed up, so if you go on one, verify that first so you do not get a plane ticket for a trip that gets canceled.

Tony09

Bike vacation in the Basque country (Spain & France), stunning region, good routes (all levels), fantastic food from the little cheap and local "Pintxos" bar around the corner to the magnificient Michelin star restaurant (almost 10 restaurants with 23 michelin star...)