Provence and the French Riviera Reviews

A great trip through the beautiful countryside of Provence with lots of picturesque hilltop villages. Max, our French guide and driver was fabulous. We can't speak highly enough of him. He has lived and worked in Australia and had a great understanding of our 'culture' and sense of humour. At every town he would take us on a walking tour describing ...read more the local points of interest and history and putting it in context with what we had seen before. He could recommend restaurants everywhere we went and he had in depth knowledge of the area.

We were a group of 14, made up of 5 couples (seniors), 1 couple in their late 30s and 2 ladies travelling on their own. It was a 16 seater bus so thankfully we had a bit of space. There were no personality clashes and importantly, everyone was on time for departures etc. The pace of the tour was perfect. Most days we didn't travel too far and we always had free time. There were a couple of excursions like the visit to the pottery that I found less interesting, but others in the group enjoyed them.

My only criticism would be of the Back Roads Tours Office. A couple of days before we left we emailed them re concerns about the impact of the French train strikes on our arrival in Nice to start the tour and we still haven't had a response. Luckily, our train did run the day before the tour started and we arrived in Nice in time to start the tour. We probably should have contacted Yvonne from Global Journeys with our concerns and she would have sorted it out for us!