Madrid, Basque Country, Lourdes, Provence and Barcelona (17 destinations)

Customer Reviews

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  Kaylene

  · August 26th, 2025
  The tour around northern Spain and Southern France was a lovely experience. The places we visited were beautiful and left many wonderful memories. However organisation of the tour was confusing due to the transportation facilities they used. We ended up travelling on multiple buses, sometimes changing 3 buses over 2 days as well as having multiple tour guides rather than one bus, one guide and one bus driver. We were in different groups of people who couldn’t speak English so we found ourselves unable to make friendships as we would normally have done on previous bus tours. All the guides were exceptional and made sure we were comfortable and understood where we were going to, what we were going to see and what we should try to do while we were there. They jam packed a lot into each day. Some days were spent travelling long distances so when we got to our hotel it was usually too late to explore and sometimes even find a place to eat. We arrived in Marseille late so had dinner at the hotel restaurant and went to bed. We didn’t get to see any of Marseille at all as we left early to continue the following days route. Our hotels were poor to good, depending on where it was situated. The first hotel in Madrid and the second in Bilbao were poor in that they were too far out of town and no where to eat except at the hotel or walk kilometres to find a restaurant/ cafe. SAN Sebastián was a beautiful hotel but our room was overlooking the car park and garbage bins. The Lourdes, Barcelona and last hotel in Madrid (Elba) were good as they were comfortable and close to central locations. The Ibis in Marseille and the hotel in Bordeaux were adequate. As we discovered along the way we found out that parts of the trip could have been altered as that was what other passengers had done. Hence the need to change buses often and have different people coming on or getting off. We spent long hours in some places due to having to wait for buses to bring new passengers from their destinations, swap over our luggage onto the new bus and finally start the trip with a whole new group of people. Luckily our guides stayed on with us until we reached the hotel. We were dropped off and told the next days plan and if we were in another bus or if we were having a new guide. We finally decided to make a change ourselves by staying in Barcelona and not go to Valencia, and travel by fast train to Madrid so we could catch our flights home. This gave us a chance to rest up and it saved us another 13 hours of travelling in the bus as well. We got to explore Barcelona ourselves, which we enjoyed. The fast train to Madrid was excellent and we stayed in the Elba hotel which was very handy to the airport.
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  Europamundo commented on this review

  Thank you very much for taking the time to share such detailed feedback about your tour. We are delighted to hear that you enjoyed the beauty of northern Spain and southern France and that the guides ensured you were comfortable and well-informed... Show more
  Trip date: August 2025