Portugal

The trip was a perfect way to visit southern Portugal. The guides were awesome, always there to lend a hand or offer guidance. The bikes were outstanding - brand new fleet. The routes were interesting and scenic with little traffic. The food and wine were great. And above all the opportunity to spend time with old friends and to meet new friends was rewarding. Thanks

Enjoyed this trip to Portugal. Good mix of easy and moderate riding to work off the fantastic food/beverages.

Amazing experience - highly recommend! Beautiful countryside and stunning coastal views! I also recommend the E-bike due to some very challenging hills!! The bikes were high quality and held the charge! Great hotels and everyone was so kind and welcoming throughout the entire tour!! We are looking for our next VBT experience now!!

Beautiful scenery with many picturesque views along the coast. The hotels were top notch. We had hybrid 27-speed bikes which performed well. The Ride With GPS app was easy to follow & accurate 99% of the time.

We thoroughly enjoyed our first VBT experience. The tour route was very well laid out and we cannot not say enough about how impressive our tour leaders, David and Frederico, both of whom are natives of Portugal. Kudos to VBT for the way they planned and conducted our tour!

We loved this trip! Beautiful and varied biking routes; knowledgeable, competent and engaging guides, top-notch hotels, delicious food and interesting cultural activities. I wish I could do it all over again!

Very enjoyable trip. Guides were excellent. The meals on the River Boat were also excellent. Would highly recommend this trip.

We love VBT and the best part of this trip was our leader, Manu. He is awesome! All VBT leaders are great, and he is at the top. It was the initial offering of the trip, and some kinks will be addressed, I am sure. Coordinating the boat and the buses (there were A LOT of buses) and biking is complex. We enjoyed the chance to mix with other travelers on the boat. We enjoyed unpacking only once. The Douro is not a river where you can bike alongside, like the Danube--so there is a lot of bus transfer time on twisty steep roads (some complained of car sickness). It is a hilly area--definitely on the "moderate" scale, not the "easy-moderate" scale. Climate always a question-in late April we had both cold (40's) and wet and warm (70s) and sunny. The olive oil mill and winery were good experiences. The archeological site was sketchy.... If you like hills and don't mind the bus, a good trip to some less accessible areas.

Landscapes of the Camino de Santiago was a great experience. I always thought "Seize the Moment" but this trip gave me a new perspective, "Let the moment Seize You". The beautiful scenery of this trip was amazing.

It was well planned, had great accommodations and super guides. We experienced the best landscapes of three separate caminos. I give it a 5 in spite of some rainy days

As has been true with every one of our previous Country Walkers trips, we were so impressed with the skills and knowledge of our guides, Ana and Luis. They made the daily experiences stress free and so much fun. We learned a lot. We enjoyed the interactions with the others on the tour. The teaching from local people was great. I was so impressed that you were able to keep Marialva on the tour despite the big fire two months ago. We included both the pre and post trip extensions in Porto and Lisbon. We enjoyed exploring Porto and scheduled two port wine tastings. In Lisbon, we explored restaurants, museums, and churches. We had an extra day in Lisbon when our flight home was cancelled. (We were glad that we had purchased travel insurance). We got to visit a couple more places and walked around some different neighborhoods. Despite being in November, we had decent weather. The only really rainy morning was while we were on the boat on the Douro river. The rain stopped by the time we got off. I have a few suggestions for improvements: 1) The tour of the olive oil facility was the only disappointment of the week. I wish that there had been more time spent to discuss old and current methods of making olive oil. A short video with still pictures and some vignettes demonstrating olive harvesting would have been a big improvement. 2) Keep the nature preserve walk at Marialva. It was great, as was the knowledgable leader. Getting to know a bit more about "rewilding" and something about wildlife was great. 3) I suggest that the evening meal at Marialva be included in the tour. There weren't many choices for where to eat. Or include a driver and vehicle to a near-by town with some suggestions.

This was our first Country Walkers trip and it exceeded our expectations in practically every way! Our guides (Helene and Rita) were excellent and filled our walks with historical and ecological knowledge and tidbits about wherever we were that day. The regions were fascinating, beautiful and seemed to be indicative of authentic Portuguese life away from the cities! Lodging was wonderful in two out of three locations but adequate and interesting in the third! We very much enjoyed meeting and spending this journey with the four other walking companions that we had. In essence, we had a great time, a lot of fun and felt like we really got to see the heart of Portugal! We absolutely loved it!