Paris, Dordogne & Bordeaux
Has anyone experienced this tour? Please share any tips you might have. We're heading out in early June. Thank you!
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Has anyone experienced this tour? Please share any tips you might have. We're heading out in early June. Thank you!
Comments
We are on this tour that leaves April 29th
I believe this is a new tour this year
I will post our experiences when we get back
I would love to hear feedback on tis tour. During our Brittany/Normandy trip last year the Tauck representative that is in charge of setting up the Paris/Dordogne/Bordeaux tour tag along with us. She was really excited about the tour. They worked really hard at trying to have three nights at most hotels rather than changing hotels every other night. They had feedback from other land tours that this would be optimal and I would agree. We are planning to go in 2027, heading to England for 2026 and doing the Tulip cruise next month. So many places to go and so little time. Pleas let us know how the travel times were between location particularly the day between Lyon and Les Eyzies.
When I first started traveling with Tauck, it was more common for Tauck to stay places three nights in a hotel but people didn’t like that. This was called hub and spoke I believe, so you stay in one spot, but travel out each day to see sites, but that involves longer travel times. When you move hotels more frequently, you are likely traveling less on the buses to get to the sites from where your hotel is. These are of course ‘tours’ which involve ‘travel’ in one way or another.
For this tour the hotel number of nights is 3,2,3,3,2
Dear Marr1011, Thank you so much! We look forward to your report!!!
We're on the 5/27 trip, very excited. We've been to Paris (Tauck) before the itinerary duplicates very little from other trips. Anyone else booked on this one?
I, too, am delighted to see extended hotel stays and look forward to reading critiques of this tour.
We are on this tour and planning our extra time. Anyone been to the Louis Vuitton Foundation Museum? New David Hockney exhibition there.
Another nuance revealed. Coach people like to change hotels every two days. Something for everyone. We do boat trips cuz we can’t wait to unpack and be in our own digs for a week or two. We are not suitcase people. I lived that way for thirty-seven years. I want to go and unpack and have my hotel follow me around. I also don’t tour eight hours a day. Four hours is plenty unless I’m in Africa or Antarctica.
Welcome back from Dordogne?
does anyone who already has travelled have highlights or "advice" to share?
Just got back from this trip last night
As soon as I am done with all of the laundry I will post my experiences!!
Okay laundry done so here goes:
We thoroughly enjoyed this great trip
We were a group of 14 and we were the first group to take the tour.
Because of that we did encounter a few minor glitches, however all were expertly handled by our wonderful tour director Marianne.
We were staying in hotels and going to restaurants Tauck had never used before, Marianne did an amazing job getting people to understand what her expectations were and she never took no for an answer
HOTELS:
3 nights in Paris at the Sofitel Baltimore, our least favorite hotel of the trip. just average
2 nights in Lyon at the Intercontinental Hotel Dieu. Beautiful hotel, spacious rooms, good restaurant and having a drink in the spectacular bar a must.
3 nights in Les Eyzies at the Hotel Les Glycines. Small French country style hotel. very nice, peaceful with comfortable rooms
3 nights in Bordeaux at the Hotel Burdigala. Beautiful hotel with spacious rooms. good bar and restaurant and good location
2 nights in Biarritz at the Regina Hotel. We were supposed to stay at the Hotel du Palais which is the former palace of Napoleon III but we were informed a few weeks before the tour that the hotel had been changed. We weren’t told why at the time but when we got to Biarritz we found out a very wealthy family had taken over the whole hotel. However we really liked the Regina Hotel. A boutique hotel with great rooms and great views of the lighthouse and ocean. Knowing they were a second choice hotel the staff was extremely attentive and went out of their way to make sure we had a great stay there.
MEALS:
We had many great group meals. The most memorable were:
Lunch at the Brassierie at the Eiffel Tower. great food and lots of it. save room for dessert, you won’t be disappointed.
Nice lunch at the Moulin de la Galette in Monmartre
Dinner at the Hotel Les Glycine. The restaurant there has a Michelin star and we were served a 7 course meal of beautiful and delicious food.
The picnic lunch at the Chateau Kerwin winery
I was a little surprised at the amount of meals we had to have on our own, it seemed like a lot but I’ve never done a 14 day tour so maybe it was the norm.
Also a lot of bus time
in summary, this tour is rated a 3 for activity and a 4 for pace and I agree with that.
Lots of walking on uneven surfaces and lots of steps and of course changing hotels and long bus rides get tiring.
A beautiful and unique tour I would recommend.
Thanks for your report. I love the multi-night hotel stays. Can you expand on the Sofitel in Paris? What did you not care for? Rooms? Food? Service? Can you also expand on how you liked the excursions? — Less those in Paris and Montmartre. Thanks in advance.
Don’t want to sound unappreciative of the report but other than stay at hotels, eat, and ride on a bus did you do-see-experience-enjoy-despise anything or any place?
I didn’t mean to say the Sofitel was bad but it wasn’t as nice as all of the others. I can’t comment on the food since we only ate the breakfast there which was fine
Excursions:
In Lyon the trip up to the hill to the Basilica was good, beautiful views although I didn’t enjoy the funicular ride up.
The silk museum was very interesting
The Dordogne region had some incredible sites every where you looked
We enjoyed the visit to the Beynac castle, the Eyrignac gardens and the Lascaux IV cave replica
In Bordeaux we did a nice walking tour and two winery visits the Chateau Kerwin being the best.
On our own time in Bordeaux we went to the Bassins des Lumieres which we really enjoyed
We had excellent local tour guides throughout the trip
Thanks for providing additional information.
maryr101: how often were there bus rides over three hours? what was the longest travel day by bus? how long? from where to where?did the group explore the ancient villages together or break into smaller groups?
did someone instruct you about regional wines and cheeses?
We were usually not on the bus for more than two hours at a time. The longer rides were broken up by stops in a village or to visit a site.
The tour director was very good at giving us “rest” stops if we were on the bus for more than an hour and a half
Day 6 was a longish day. We left Lyon at 8am drove about 2.5 hours and stopped for tour of Orcival and had lunch. then drove another 2hrs to Les Eyzies.
Another long day when we left Bordeaux for Biarritz. That trip was broken up by a beautiful, long lunch at the Corniche restaurant
We toured all of the villages as a group with a local guide. We were a group of 14 which was very manageable.
The local tour guide we had the whole time we were in Bordeaux was very knowledgeable about the wine of the region.
Although we had some opportunities to have different cheeses we didn’t really get any info on them.