Country Roads of France Reviews

We went on Country Roads of France in May 2014. We had an amazing time on this tour. Our tour guide Laurent was fantastic. Laurent made France come alive with his wonderful insight into French people and their culture.There was 10 Americans, 2 Canadians and 26 Australians on the tour in a 40 seater coach. The accommodation was of a very high quality ...read more and always in the centre of the cities we visited. The tour travels into the country of France and avoids a lot of the motorways. France is a diverse and interesting country with lots of spectacular scenery and history. We felt that there was a new surprise every day. We took most of the optional excursions. These do add an additional cost onto the tour but we had great fun on these, especially the ones which included evening meals. We experienced things that we probably would never had done if we were on our own. We met some wonderful people on the tour which really added to the experience. We would highly recommend this tour.

Compared to other Insight Country Roads Tours that we have taken, we hardly ever went on anything other than a highway/expressway and appeared to spend too much time selling their option excursions and changing the itinerary to accommodate these excursions. For instance, we spent our second day out of Paris (3rd day of the tour) entirely as a free day ...read more in Dijon ( a nice city but hardly requires a full day to walk around the old centre of town), when by the itinerary, we were supposed to go on a drive to a country village and wine tasting. These activities had been squashed into the afternoon of the day before resulting in traveling long distances on the expressway and getting into our accommodation late, about 6:30 or later. The next day those taking the optional excursion filled in their day nicely. They need to take a look at our other tour with Albatross, which indeed did travel on Country Roads.

Country Roads of France' was a really enjoyable tour. Probably the best way to see the 'real' France. Travelling through the countryside and seeing all the villages was delightful. The upgrade to the Fairmont at Monte Carlo was a bonus. I would thoroughly recommend this tour.