Austria Bike Tour Reviews (page 41)
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★★★★★ Mycycle50 July 1, 2019Very beautiful but more difficult than advertised.
· Prague-Vienna-Bratislava-Budapest
Our outfitter provided lots of info- maps, gps routes and suggested sites to visit. Some very rough roads, some steep hills.
- What was the date of your tour?
- May 22 to June 15
- How many tours have you completed?
- 9
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia
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★★★★★ Mario Ceccanese 10 months ago
Cycling adventure
· Prague-Vienna-Bratislava-Budapest
Navigation tools given(Garmin + maps) were very unreliable, especially entering and leaving cities - have had tours where line by line navigation instructions were provided as well as appropriate scale maps. Our group of 6 had 3 Garmins which were rarely in agreement - we then tried to follow whatever route on which 2 Garmins agreed. Czech Republic off road trails were very rough for the bikes provided - mountain bikes would have been more appropriate or better routes. We realize that due to unforeseen circumstances due to flooding on the Danube that route changes were necessary, but new routes were poorly described, and Garmins were now of no use- we resorted to Google Maps for navigation which occasionally placed us on roads which were too busy. Safety should be a prime concern, but navigation issues made this trip much more difficult and risky than originally described.
- What was the date of your tour?
- Sept 2024
- How many tours have you completed?
- 10
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Do you recommend this tour?
- No
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia
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★★★★★ Chloek1234 December 3, 2015Interesting tour for the well-traveled individual
· Prague to Vienna via Cesky Krumlov
I went on this tour as a BikeTours.com staff member. I think that this tour has some wonderful highlights - Prague, Cesky Krumlov, but also is a bit monotonous. I enjoy riding in more varied scenery that this tour offered. However, the bike path network within the country is extensive (and I was impressed). The accommodations and food were basic to nice. The Czech people were very kind and down-to-earth. Our guide, Jitka, was always helpful and informative. This tour is consistently hilly and is a true level 3 in that sense. I would recommend this tour to a intermediate level cyclist, who is well traveled and wants to experience the less traveled side of Europe.
- How many tours have you completed?
- 2
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria, Czech Republic
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★★★★★ The dozer October 18, 2016
Challenging to peddle to fairy tale cities.
· Prague to Vienna via Cesky Krumlov
The route was challenging, navigation difficults, but beautiful UNESCO sites each night. We were just dropped off with the wrong bikes, a Garmin we could not use, and one sheet of paper with directions and overview of route. If it had not been for 5 Irish ladies on the same route we would have really struggled. They had a Garmin that worked and with intense map study did not get lost as often as we did. VERY few people spoke English. Our pick up person was very rude to the Irish ladies.
- What was the date of your tour?
- August 2015
- How many tours have you completed?
- 3
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Much harder
- Do you recommend this tour?
- No
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria, Czech Republic
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★★★★★ Linda Farnworth May 30, 2024
Not impressed with Ave
· Prague to Vienna via Cesky Krumlov
The bikes were not good. One day the range of ebike battery barely made it, my chain came off twice, seat kept slipping down, other equipment not great, and worst of all the seats were TERRIBLE.
The ride was nice though with good scenery and a challenging ride.- What was the date of your tour?
- May 18, 2024
- How many tours have you completed?
- 4
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Do you recommend this tour?
- No
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria, Czech Republic
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★★★★★ mb001 October 28, 2019Fun trip with lots of biking.
· Vienna to Budapest 5-nights (Active)
My friend and I did this trip in early Oct. The first hotel in Vienne is Hotel Arcortel and not near any restaurants or pubs but close to the start of the trip. I would suggest booking a few days before in the city center if you plan on seeing Vienna. We stayed next in Hotel Devin in Bratislava. The hotel here and city were great. Everything walking distance. Next was Hotel Barrokk in Gyor. This was a very nice hotel and city that you could walk to a variety of restaurants and shopping. Then day 3 we biked 124km to Esztergom. There is an option to take a train for half of this trip. We did the biking and found it a very long day, but doable. We had electric bikes and it was a good thing! This day of biking was the most difficult not only because of the distance, but the terrain. You are in remote Hungarian countryside with no one around for hours. The bike trail or paths are poorly marked in some areas you find yourself on dirt farm land. Unfortunately we were lost a lot! The hotel in Esztergom was the Hotel Bellevue. This hotel is set on a busy street with no options to walk to any other restaurants or shopping. We were not aware that dinner must be booked ahead of time. After talking our way into a reservation, we found the buffet was average. If possible stay in the city and not this hotel. On the last day we left and needed to catch the ferry across the river. We were lucky as the week we were there was the last week of the season for the ferry. We rode to Budapest and again found some of the trails or paths poorly marked. We ran into a guided tour along the way and the guide told us about an app called mapy.cz and it has the entire map of the bike path we used and saved us several times. It was great to finish in Budapest as it is a very large exciting city with so much to do! The NH Hotel was easy to get to and situated close to many sites.
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★★★★★ Josée May 3, 2024
Not our dream trip
· Vienna to Budapest 5-nights (Active)
We booked the active tour because we did not have time to do the classic. 80-100 km per day were too much, specially when 1 day/4 was 100% rain. We cannot control temperature on a cycling trip, but to cycle 50-60 km in the rain would have been much better than 100km that day. On top of that, our hotel was booked at 130km instead of 100 by mistake. The hotel was nice enough to send a van and a trailer to pick us up. We were soaked!!! Out of 5 hotels, I would consider that 3 nights were more 3.5 stars than 4 and the 2 other nights were 4 to 5 stars. In some small towns, where nobody speak English, it would have nice have more guidance to know where to go to buy the ferry tickets and to know that not all countries use Euros and where to change money for cash only situation. Also, the ferry schedule was not clear, and found out that they take breaks in the morning and can cause a delay.
We were 3 (1 road bike + 2 e-bikes). The roads were rough in some areas with deep puddles of water during the rain. Of course, a flat happened and we struggled to find a pump for the road bike. The pumps that were given to us were for the e-bikes and did not fit. In a small town with no English speaking around, we managed to resolve the situation. Also, the first morning we started the trip, we had to go to a bike store to ask for extra tires in case of a flat. There were not given to us at the beginning. Thank god we went! Having done 2 cycling trips (Portugal and Croatia) in the past year, we found that the Vienna to Budapest was a bit boring. The landscape was not very different from start to beginning and the distances were long in between the little cities we visited.
Minimum information were given to us and it would have been nice to have suggestions for restaurants and more details, etc, etc. We received that info with the other companies we used for the other trips.
A water bottle or a shirt from your company would have been also a nice surprise.
The trip was OK, but can be improved in many ways for the price we paid.
We were happy for the quick response when we had the issue with the hotel at 130km instead of 100
The NH Danube or NH Budapest (We had to change room at 11h00 pm because there was a heating problem that made the room like a sauna and the window handle was broken, so we could not open it….) are more 3 stars hotels. The loft in Bratislava was VERY VERY Nice and the Barok in Gyor was great also. We expected more at the to pass on Esztergom, because we could not come back the next day to visit. I heard that the 30km we missed were worth the views and cycling.
I would recommend the trip to people that did not cycle in Portugal, Croatia and want a flat route.
4 days were a lot concerning the distances, but 6 days would have make it long for the lack of change of scenery. This is my opinion! -
★★★★★ Kitty Brodie July 31, 2024
Not quite what we expected
· Vienna to Budapest 5-nights (Active)
We booked a self-guided 5-day tour from Vienna to Budapest.
There were a few things that did not sit well with us on the organizational front.
The tour itself was great once we got started and the cities/hotels en route were great.
The bike service was great... we had a mechanical issue on Day 1 of riding, and the bike was replaced the next morning.Organizationally:
Confirmation of tour was delayed until the 1 day before the original day of departure.
When I tried to cancel because we wanted to book something that was confirmed, I was told this was not possible.
That seemed unfair, when the tour operator has the right to cancel, but not the client.The initial orientation meeting on "Day 1" in Vienna did not happen until "Day 2".
Nothing at all was arranged for "Day 1" other than the hotel in Vienna.The 5 day tour turned out to be 5 nights, with the 1st night in Vienna, where we already were staying.
So not 5 nights on the road, but 5 nights in hotels. Starting on the morning of "Day 2" makes the tour really only a 4 day tour in my opinion.The bikes that were brought to us on the morning of "Day 2" were not the right bikes that we had ordered.
Pick up time for our bags from the hotel was not mentioned in the orientation meeting.
Consequently, we missed the pickup time on the first hotel and had to pay for a taxi to bring the bags to the next hotel.
This again seemed unfair.- What was the date of your tour?
- May 2024
- How many tours have you completed?
- 2
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- As expected
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- First-time bike tourists, Solo travelers, Families with teens, Families with young kids
- Do you recommend this tour?
- No
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria, Hungary, Slovakia
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★★★★★ diane g September 18, 2016Salzburg to Salzburg has fantastic scenery but directions provided are unbelievably poorly developed
· Tauern Bike Path (Salzburg-Salzburg)
Salzburg to Salzburg over 6 days is higher than a level 2. The terrain is hilly. I do not recommend this self guided tour because the german-speaking outfits they contract with provide totally inadequate self-guiding instructions. They do not know what a cue sheet is. They do not provide any directions as to north, south, east, west; they do not provide any street names. AND, the directions in English are very obviously translated very poorly from the German. In addition, there is no way to find your hotel once off the bike path. You have to depend upon good route finding skills for this hotel finding as well as the entire trip. We had this same experience with bike tours.com 7 years ago and thought they might have gotten better at directions. We gave bike tours feedback at that time, and our friends gave feedback on their german-speaking directions on their self-guided tour, and nothing changed. Hence I am writing this review without making a customer complaint becaue I do not believe bike tours will fix this problem. AND, THIS TOUR REQUIRES ONE TO CONSULT 3 SETS OF INSTRUCTIONS THROUGHOUT THE TRIP. 2 sets of friends had exactly the same experience. 2 stars are for getting our luggage to each hotel before we arrived; and the hotels were gracious and accommodating.
- What was the date of your tour?
- September 2016
- How many tours have you completed?
- 6
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Do you recommend this tour?
- No
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria
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★★★★★ Ron S September 11, 2017Classic
· Vienna to Budapest (Classic)
Nice hotels. Great company rep. (Joseph ) Lousy route. Too many dirt trails including one which may have been a garbage dump.l Less than twenty five percent of the route was along the Danube. The signage was not good. I have run four trips thru Bike Tours but this one is not a winner. All the others were great. One participant who had a patellar injury rented an electric assist bike but the battery pack did not hold charge very long. We had additional niggling bike problems.
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★★★★★ Sequoia August 18, 2019
Not quite the Danube River Trip we expected
· Vienna to Budapest (Classic)
Too much of the trip was off the river, and off trails. Going through corn fields was not our favorite. Dams should be called levees. The route through Budapest on sidewalks was difficult, too busy with trucks and traffic. It is not a bicycle friendly city. Hotel could have been closer to the river. We would recommend 2 nights in Bratislava, there is so much to see there. Add another day to sleep over in Hainburg. We loved the hotel in Vienna. We recommend the lower trail through the National Park on day one, to go swimming!!! The day one detour was difficult because of traffic, maybe there's a walk around the detour on bike path instead of so much road. We loved Gyur. Three days were totally off the river. We enjoyed the ferry rides very much. The last two days were on the river and were the best days.
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★★★★★ GregR October 6, 2019Too much highway biking
· Dolomites to Trieste via Lake Bled at the Foot of the Julian Alps
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★★★★★ May July 15, 2023First family cycling trip completed!
· Danube Bike Path 8 Nights (Upscale Lodging)
Overall a satisfactory trip! The GPS is very useful for navigation. The hotels are great! Just on first day, we find that 2 of the 4 bikes are not fit. We have enter our age and height and has not been told specifically what kinds of bikes will be assigned. I found that they just give standard bikes for adult female and male disregard our height and age (Asians in average are shorter than Westerners.) The person, Robert, arrived for “bike fitting” was not helpful at all. He suggested my daughter to cycle 30km to their bike shop to change bike. When we asked him to call customer service, he said he didn’t have Wi-Fi. So, Eurobike send a staff without communication methods to help customers’ solve problems? Finally, Robert had to use my phone to call the CS number. And in the phone, he said we are “bla, bla, bla.” Is it the customers cannot voice their requests, even the bikes are not fit and customers have to take the risk of getting hurt or accident? and seems to Robert, customers’ requests are “bla, bla, bla..” And customers need to take the riding risk to go 30km to change bike? Later he mentioned it may need to charge EUR 50 per bike change if need to switch bikes in Passau. I have emailed biketour and I am grateful that next day the 2 bikes were changed without additional charges. In second day, Simon is much more helpful. Simon helps us do the testing & it works. Simon is v polite and helpful. Passau is the starting point of Danube cycle path. I feel strange that the outsource company does not have a bike rental centre there. This is our first family cycling trip and it did create stresses at the beginning. The outsource company probably need to have better communication with biketour.
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★★★★★ Shirley Santucci 10 months ago
Disappointed
· Danube Bike Path 8 Nights (Upscale Lodging)
Total lack of communication in not informing us that our biking would end 2 days early, which meant missing out biking through the Wachau valley . When I contacted Bike Tours that my husband was ill and could not make the trip. I should have been informed then that there were changes to the scheduled tour. The welcome meeting & bike fitting was a joke. There was absolutely no value in that 15 minute meeting. I had to adjust the handle bars myself and struggle through removing the battery for charging at the 1st two hotels that did not offer charging in the bike storage area. The electric bike itself was very good quality and comfortable to ride. The printed trip itinerary was easy to follow but did not offer much in the way of "do not miss" highlights along the way. In my opinion, only three of the hotels were worth the upscale category. I would not recommend this bike tour for anyone that has experienced quality bike tours previously.
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★★★★★ MM 11 months agoFlood Trip
· · Danube Delights: Biking through Four Countries
We were bussed from Passau to Vienna to meet the boat, which never left port for the week due to flooding. All week we were told their was a possibility of leaving port, so there were days we had to stay around the boat to wait for details, which hampered our daily plans. It would have been better to just tell us up front we would be there all week, so our plans for the day could be made.
The cruise director did everything he could to make the trip memorable, which is was, with the constraints he had.
Breakfast's were fabulous, lunches provided were good! Dinners were a little lacking, but adequate. Drinks were fine, but more options for daily drink tickets would have been appreciated. The Vivienne was beautiful! -
★★★★★ Carol Bly 11 months agoNot what hoped for. Poor directions. Unsafe routes and not well marked.
· Tauern Bike Path (Krimml-Passau)
Loved quiet rides in country and thru villages but dangerous conditions were not marked due to recent storms. We should have been notified and got onto dangerous routes.
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★★★★★ frank vaughan 10 months agoMore of a boat trip than a bike trip
· · Danube Discovery: Bike and Boat through Enchanting Capitals
We have been on 4 boat and bike tours. This was not a favorite. The boat company charges additional fees for anything- $15 daily fee for internet, $3.50 for a bottle of water, and $5+ for alcohol. They cover a long distance on the boat, so you do not have much time to ride the bike. When you do, it is a stringent timeline- off the ship at 9 am and meet the boat at 2:30 or you will miss the boat. It does not give you much time to look around. They have strictly enforced assigned seating at breakfast and dinner so it minimizes the chances of meeting other people. The guide was not very nice and did not ride the trails. They were covered in places with 4-6 inches of mud from the recent flooding and many were unrideable. Then the guide got mad when we returned to the boat covered in mud. The extra tours they sell were expensive and ok, but the guide on the Vienna tour left 2 of our group behind so they had to find their way back. The maps provided were ok, but somewhat confusing, and the briefing by the guide was rushed and not helpful. It's a German boat with German food and lots of retired Germans. There is nothing wrong with that, but many of them did not go on the rides described but just used the trip as a cheap river trip with some side rides.
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★★★★★ Debra Miller September 27, 2023A Bit Disappointing
· Danube Bike Path 7 Nights (Classic)
Cycling along a paved path along the Danube was relaxing for our group of four. Day three was truly beautiful with cobblestone roads and colorful houses in the villages. Wish we had gone earlier in the year as many restaurants and shops were closed for the season.
- What was the date of your tour?
- September 2023
- How many tours have you completed?
- 4
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- As expected
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- First-time bike tourists
- Do you recommend this tour?
- No
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria, Germany
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★★★★★ John Zimmerman 11 months ago
Washout
· Danube Bike Path 7 Nights (Classic)
So I picked the worst possible week to do this, the trip was canceled by the tour company after 2 days because of flooding. I'm still waiting to hear from them. The bike was very nice, it had fenders, which came in handy in the steady rain I biked in the 2 days I was on the tour. The path was well marked, almost all that I was on was paved. One downside was because of the rain, the restaurants along the trail were closed, so when I most needed a hot drink, none were to be found. I couldn't use the turn by turn app because of the rain, but the trail guide book was very nice, and the directions were easy to follow. Conclusion, September is not a good month to do this, it was around 50 degrees the entire time I was on the cycle path. I want to attempt this again, there is a 99 percent chance that the weather will be better.
- What was the date of your tour?
- September 2024
- How many tours have you completed?
- this was the first one
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Much easier
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- First-time bike tourists, Solo travelers, Families with teens, Families with young kids
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
- Countries included in this tour?
- Austria, Germany
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★★★★★ Eric September 3, 2019
Lackluster field tour!!
· Vienna to Budapest (Classic)
Hate to be the negative Nelly,but this tour was nowhere near where i'd hoped it to be...It really shouldn't be listed as a Danube River tour,as the only day i saw the river all day,was the last.Several days of riding through corn and sunflower fields on unmarked trails with poor direction. Let me be clear,I chose to follow the map and directions given,as I had no cell phone service in Europe. The last tour I did was Prague to Dresden.Clearly marked trails,with a GPS that wasn't great,but sufficient. Apparently I got my hopes up too high after that one.Spent most of my time checking and double checking Km markers in the guide Vs. Km markers on the bike. Not the relaxing ride I had hoped for.I,along with several other riders,spent some extra time looking for the actual trail. I was watching many people do the same as me...looking for the trail!! Too many unmarked junctions,this trail is really undeveloped in this part of Europe,which was unfortunate-this is what i went for,the ride.A lot of off road time,which would be fine,if I wasn't so busy checking and double checking maps.Really stressful when it should've been relaxing. The positive is the towns were great,the hotels were all very nice,the bike was better than I expected and handled everything-including the off road,and my luggage was always where it was supposed to be.I just so badly wish the ride would've been more relaxing....As i said when i began-the last day of the tour was what I had hoped for the whole length of the tour,relaxing and enjoyable.Unfortunately,it was the only one...
