On most of our trips Beth and I want to sample the local wine. But it is never a good idea to drive yourself to any wine tastings and especially in Europe the penalties are very harsh if you have had anything to drink and get stopped for any reason. We also like to get to know a new city but don’t want sit in a bus and look out the window. We prefer doing a walking tour with a local guide. Our preferred approach for vacations is to travel to a central location, typically a major city, where we can unpack and stay for most of not all of the trip and explore the region thoroughly. Part of that approach is to take day trips to the interesting places outside that city, often wineries or very scenic spots.
What do all these things have in common? We have had great success going online and searching for “small group tours”. Most times that small group has just been Beth and I with our local guide. We get a private tour but at the group tour price. A handful of times we had between 6 and 8 people in the group but we enjoyed the company each time. If the trip includes driving some place, often we get picked up and returned to our hotel instead of having to go to someplace to meet a bus.
When we want to book one of these small group tours, the first place we look is at Viator.com. They have a great selection of tours and, most importantly, they have customer reviews of each of their tours. Picking tours that have consistently high reviews from a good number of people gives us confidence we will enjoy the tour and that has been consistently true. We have also booked through Trip Advisor and been happy. We have only had one small group tour that we would felt was just OK and that was a guide who did little more than get us to the different locations and park the car while we toured that area. We very much enjoyed the sites we went to but did not get anything more than we would have gotten if we had driven ourselves there. We are spoiled and expect much more from the guides which is what we have gotten on the majority of these small group tours that we have done.
Two strong recommendations if you enjoy the tour:
- Tip the guide in the local currency, not with a credit card. We typically tip 10% of the trip cost when we think the guide has done a very good job.
- Go online and do a review of your tour. If you loved it or were not impressed – share your experience with others who are looking to book similar tours. Having multiple reviews to look at will really help you pick the tour you want and contributing to that will help others.
Below is an example of a Viator posting for a tour that Beth and I did with some things highlighted to look for. One of the big reasons we decided to do the Viking Rhone Valley cruise is that Rhone wines have been one of our favorites since college days. In the morning portion of the full day tour it was just Beth and I and then we were joined by another couple who booked the afternoon tour which was just the visit to Chateauneuf-du-Pape. In the morning we went to two other towns, Beaune and Gigondas, and we first walked the town to hear about the history of wine making there and understand the terroir. Then we tasted four wines in each town with someone local leading through each of wines. We then drove to Chateauneuf-du-Pape and stopped at one of vineyards where we walked into the vineyard and tasted grapes off the vines a few weeks before they would be harvested. In the picture at the top of this post Benoir, our guide, is having us taste from two Grenache vines right next to each other. One was just 25 years old and the second was over 100 years old. The meaning of old vines, or Vieilles Vignes, became totally clear from those two vines. We then went to the top of the hill to the ruin of the Papal residence. We learned about the history of this famous town and its wine making heritage and then he brought us to a lovely restaurant where our lunch was included in the price of the tour. It was a great lunch with excellent wine. When the other couple joined us, we walked the streets of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and visited three wineries for tastings and had 3-4 wines in each. We bought a case of different wines that we liked that day and brought that on the Viking ship for our cruise. There was no corkage fee to enjoy those terrific wines with our dinners. It was a great day of learning about Rhone wines and tasting a good number of them.
We also wanted to visit the picturesque Hill Towns of Provence: Les-Baux-de-Provence, Saint-Remy-de -Provence , Menerbes, Roussillon, Gordes, and the Abbaye Notre Dame de Senanque which is famous for its fields of lavender. We did this the day after the wine tour and again it was just Beth and I with Benoir. Since he now knew what we liked from the first day, he parked the car and walked the towns with us giving us lots of history and culture and he adjusted the pace to give us time to take lots of pictures. He was also able to work in Beth’s request that we visit the famous Roman Aqueduct Pont do Gard because we were not taking the Viking excursion that went there. We loved hearing all about the towns. He recommended a great place for us for lunch in one of the towns and left us to enjoy lunch and ate on his own since lunch was not part of this tour. Since we had two really great days with Benoir, I sweetened the tip on the second day.
All of our trips but the most recent one have been pre-Covid and that can impact things like the number of people and how many guides are actively doing tours during the pandemic.
Some of our other trips we have enjoyed are discussed below. Where we could still find the link for the specific tour that we took, I have provided that at the end of the description.
Portugal wine and cork farm day trip: In 2019 we did a Viking River Cruise down the Duoro river in Portugal. After the cruise we flew back to Lisbon and arranged a full day tour to Evora which included a great visit to a Cork farm, and we upgraded to include a delicious lunch. At one of the wineries we had a private tour with one other couple who were also very into wine so we had some good discussion with the guide during the tour. When we got to the tasting after the tour, they were bringing out more really good wines for us to taste. A tour bus had pulled in after us and it was very enjoyable to see how we were treated that the wines we got to taste compared to the large group on the tour bus. https://www.viator.com/tours/Lisbon/Evora-Wine-Day-Trip-from-Lisbon/d538-5550P31
Wine tasting in Cote Roti: At the end of our Viking cruise we had two days in Lyon and we were not excited about the tours that Viking offered the first day so we booked our own wine tour of the northern end of the Rhone valley where they only grow Syrah and Viognier. We went to three different wineries and tasted four wines at each of them. Our guide was building a tasting room in Lyon and had great relationships with the winemakers in the area. He took us to a local restaurant where we each paid for our own lunch but he suggested local favorites off the menu and we had wine by the glass with lunch. He also had us out in the vineyard tasting the grapes from the vines in two of the vineyards. Another great wine tasting experience, this time with 4 other people. https://www.viator.com/tours/Lyon/Northern-Cotes-du-Rhone-wine/d829-68322P5
- Tapas in Barcelona: At the end of our Viking Mediterranean cruise last year we extended two additional days in Barcelona, one of our favorite cities in the world. The first evening we booked a walking tour of tapas bars in Barcelona. A lovely couple from Holland joined us and they spoke excellent English so the entire tour was in English. Our guide took us to his four favorite Tapas restaurants and bought a different bottle of Spanish wine at each and we collectively chose different tapas dishes to share and our guide let us know the specialties at each place. The food and wine were very good and we got to eat where the locals like to go. This was the one tour that we have done during the pandemic. Walking from restaurant to restaurant we all wore masks. About 40% of the people out on the street were wearing masks. The five of us on this tour confirmed that we were fully vaccinated so we were comfortabl sitting at one table with masks off while we were eating and drinking but put the masks back on to go to the next location. https://www.viator.com/tours/Barcelona/Barcelona-Food-and-Wine-Tasting-Tour/d562-26613P7?m=28353&supag=76382119571&supca=1939178107&supsc=dsa-647668688366&supai=420120885771&supdv=c&supnt=g&suplp=9007772&supli=&supti=dsa-647668688366&tsem=true&supci=dsa-647668688366&supap1=&supap2=&gclid=CjwKCAiAjoeRBhAJEiwAYY3nDDxgAdWXU2QiKzbw5xO-5iJJy8sgJOMCyD7Je4YfQ9pK2GjWfX3SmRoCWIgQAvD_BwE
Normandy Beaches: After our one week cooking class in Brittany, France in 2015 we drove up to Bayeux and spent two nights there. We did the Bayeux Tapestry and that was really interesting. The next day we booked a small group tour of the Normandy beaches. This was a case where the van was full with 8 people plus the guide and getting everyone into and out of the van at each stop took a little time but it was a fun group. Our guide was an American who had been living in Normandy for years and was totally into everything about D Day. In his free time he hunted the hedgerows for memorabilia and over lunch showed us some of his collection. We made multiple stops and for the entire day he helped us understand what we were seeing and shared the history before, during, and after D Day. For example, at the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise they had a mannequin of a paratrooper hanging from the church steeple just as shown in the movie The Longest Day. He took us around the side and showed us where the paratrooper had really been trapped on the roof of the other side of the church and not able to see the bloody battle that took place in the village square. In the picture above he is walking us through the Rangers assault on Pointe du Hoc to take out the German heavy guns that could have done serious damage to the invasion fleet. After the Rangers when up the sheer cliffs to capture this site, they found that the Germans were moving the guns and none of them was operational and bloody attach was completely unnecessary. The different stops built up to walking Omaha Beach and then finishing at the American Cemetery overlook Omaha Beach where we were there for Taps and the lowering of the flag. It was a very moving day and we were so glad we were not on a big bus with 40 other people. Having the small group with a great guide made a huge difference for us. https://www.viator.com/tours/Bayeux/American-D-Day-beaches-full-day-tour-Bayeux/d909-23660P1
Walking Tours of Budapest and Prague: I had been to Prague for business several times in the late 80s for business right after the Russians pulled out. When I took Beth to Budapest and Prague in 2004 I really wanted her to get the flavor of those cities and they are very much walking cities. We booked a walking tour for both cities. In Prague it was just the two of us and in Budapest we had four other couples with us. In each case we got a great feel for the city and identified the places we wanted to go back and really spend time at, e.g. the Prague Castle and doing the hot springs baths in Budapest. These were a number of years ago and I could not find the links to the tours that we took.
I hope this was interesting and seeing the links to the trips we took give you some good ideas on what you would like to look for in full or half day excursions you might be interested in trying. Comments, questions, and other feedback is very welcome.
Bill's Thoughts on Wine, Travel, and Food 