Hi there,
My husband and I are traveling to Paris (5 days) and Avignon (3 days) in April. In Avignon we'd would like to do a full day tour to get a feel for the countryside (villages, Roman sites etc) and also a half day wine tour. Does anyone have tours they would reccomend?
Thank you!!
Bon soir!
While I do not know the name of any specific tour company, I have some questions that might help you get good answers from others. What research have you done about Avignon and the rest of Provence?
First, have you looked at the RS book about Provence? There is quite a bit of information about Avignon itself, almost a walking tour described in the book. I could give you some specific information but since I am not at home where the book is, my comments come from what I remember from the book.
Will you have a car or expect to go with a guide that has transportation? If you look at RS's book, there may be various tours that he suggests. My husband and I have driven all around this area. It is easy to do.
Again, RD's book has information about various wineries. Again, he may have some wine tours listed. How many wineries do you want to visit?
Perhaps you have already started do RS research and are just looking for the experiences of others. If so, good luck.
Have you also looked at other posters for similar topics here?
We spent a week in Avignon in May and enjoyed everything! We rented a car for 3 days and toured the area on our own. So beautiful! One day we took a day tour with Provence Reservations here
We took the Pure Luberon tour. It was amazing. We visited all the small towns in the Luberon. I'm glad we took the tour and left the driving to our tour guide. The roads were windy and small. We were a small group of 7 people. A very memorable day. We highly recommend the tour.
Not really a recommendation, but just read what you are getting.
We used Provence Panorama for a tour of Pont du Gard/Uzes/Nimes back in 2012. Now - I think perhaps we just had some bad luck, so I won't hold that against them. It's a 5 hour tour. The driver was new-ish to that tour - I think the regular driver was ill - and was about 15 min late. We had about 45 min to see Pont du Gard. At Uzes, the traffic was so bad, he had a hard time finding a spot to drop us off, and when he finally did - shopkeepers were on his case about it. Again - we had about 45 min - which gave us enough time to walk around a few blocks and pop into a church. Next was Nimes - where we were supposed to have entrance to the arena - except...because we were there Oct 2 or 3, the schedule had changed from Sept opening/closing times and we ended up getting there about 10 min after the arena had the final entry. Sigh. (He had gone to the Maison Carree first). So there was no checking at all about possible changes in closing times. The group ended up sitting in a park nearby for a half hour before heading back to Avignon. At least I had some ice cream.
Now - that's not to say that their other tours aren't good (they have good reviews) - and like I said, the stars were aligned against us that day I think. But def look at the number of stops and the length of the tour. If you can contact the company you use and see how long a stop there is in each place - 45-60 min doesn't net you much time at all, especially if there are traffic delays. I'd focus on a longer tour (8 hrs) with maybe 3 stops or so. You can always check a site like rome2rio and see how long the drive is between each place on the tour, so that would give you an idea of how much time is going to be spent in transit...in our 5 hr tour, about 90 min of that was driving, leaving only 3.5 hrs to see the sites.
We revisited the area in 2015 and had a car rental, so we were able to return to Nimes and see the arena and more of the city, and spent a little more time at Pont du Gard. With our own vehicle, we saw Nimes and Arles one day, spent a morning and early afternoon visiting Les Baux and Glanum, and spent a day in Aix (cut short by torrential rain, thunder and lightning, and some flooding - fun fun!).
In my years of visiting Avignon (great place) I have dealt with the municipal travel authority several times, both on-line and at their office in the centre of the old city. Their co-operative attitude puts to shame the bureaucrats in Paris tourism. You can get plenty advice about both the city and the region from them here: http://www.avignon-tourisme.com/home-1-2.html
The municipal and regional governments in southern France are more bewildering than the wine appellations. Each one seems to have its own tourism office and certainly its own website. Hard work on Yahoo or Google or whatever can dig up lots of data.
For Roman archaeology, a train ride down to Arles will find two ampitheatres and lots of memories of van Gogh (no actual art, of course) and a fine farmers market on occasional days. Or go north to Orange where the ampitheatre with its famous acoustics is still the site of an annual opera festival (bring a pillow; maybe two.) Orange is adjacent to Chateau neuf du papes, now just a pile of rubble but with famous wineries around its feet. The Avignon tourism agency can help with all of this, and boat rides too.
We had two wonderful experiences with Provence Panorama in 2014. We took the full day "Wine, History and Chocolate" tour and the half day "Luberon and Lavender" tour, even though it was too early for lavender. Both guides were professional and pleasant, as were our fellow travelers. The details of the tours have changed since 2014, but I would definitely use this business again if we ever make it back to Avignon.
I don't know about tours, but sightseeing in the area on my own without a car, the two most impressive Roman sights - by far - were the amphitheater in Nimes (almost completely intact and with a great audioguide that really brought it to life), and the theater in Orange (with its huge and intact theatrical wall). Arles has more Roman sights, but they were not as impressive, including the museum and the amphitheater (much less intact than the one in Nimes). However, I enjoyed the town of Arles very much, although I enjoyed Nimes even more. Orange as a town is a bit grungy - see the theater and move on.
Of course, I didn't get to Pont de Gard, which seems quite special from the pictures. So much to see, so little time.
