English speaking Canadians in Germany My wife and I joined my brother, his wife and our cousin to take this trip, The homeland of our father. Overall we did enjoy this trip however there are a few issues that arose. These trips are multilingual with Spanish and Portuguese speaking folks. Be prepared to hear a lot of other languages. The group of people is constantly changing as they juggle folks around. This led to disputes over seating. Some folks do not subscribe to the first come first served model. The hotels were of varied quality. I would suggest 2 star to 4 star. All ok but definitely varied. The guides worked hard and were likeable. Javier was really good, our fav. The drivers are amazing, the places they can get the buses into is shocking. Buses are nice. The trip is early mornings, late nights and high paced. Very quick looks at places. If you just want a cursory look this is well suited.
This is a hard review to write as there were great parts to this tour and very poor parts…. Let me start by saying our Guide Havier was amazing!!! And we had him for 5 of our 8 days. For the most part, with the exception of our first two nights the hotels were good and the breakfast was next level. The buses were comfortable and clean. During our trip we had two other guilds… neither were interested in speaking English, or only did it as an afterthought and although we had translation apps on our phones much was lost in translation. We found that almost universally we were the only English speakers out of 55-64 passengers. I would also note there are some very significant cultural differences. Many of the other travellers came from cultures that are much more aggressive, to the point on one day an older Brazilian woman became hysterical when she did not get the seat she wanted assaulting one of my travelling companions So if I could make a suggestion, if you are from North America, when booking this tour, confirm you are on an English speaking bus… where most of the passengers are also English speaking .
This was a great trip. Beautiful towns, all with their own character - and the cycling got hillier and more rural as the week went on. Had good food all the way round and enjoyed the local beer. Hotels were of varying standards but all very welcoming - unfortunately not all had fans. The weather was very hot (except for one cold and wet day) - wished we packed our swimming costumes as we passed a couple of really inviting open air pools. There were quite a lot of tourists but not many from the UK - would highly recommend visiting this part of Germany.
