Will be in Provence first week of October. Moving around France by train and really don't want to rent a car, so looking at tour options. Many seemed focused on wine, but we are more interested visiting villages and soaking up the beauty of the area and maybe some wine thrown in for good measure. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Posted by
Truro, NS, Canada
3941 posts
Just choose carefully. We did a tour from Avignon when we were there in 2012 and it looked fun - it went to the Pont du Gard, Uzes and Nimes...except...we had only an hour to see the Pont, just under an hour to roam Uzes, and the driver got to Nimes 10 min too late for us to go into the arena there (the times had changed for entry at the beginning of Oct and he didn't realize, so we missed it by 10min). Overall very disappointing (if I can recall the tour company I will let you know). And let me tell you, an hour goes VERY fast...so you may want to look into day long tours. We only got the barest taste.
We are returning - actually - about the same time as you - going to spend 4 days in early Oct somewhere in the Arles area (haven't decided where yet) before moving on to Nice. We are renting a car tho. We rented a car for a few days in 2012 to see the North of France and it was totally worth it - to be on our own schedule instead of a bus or train, seeing little places...being able to stay off the beaten path...travelling at our own pace...
OK, I found it - this was the company...http://www.provence-panorama.com/en/ I think what may have happened was we had a driver who usually did a different route and he was doing our tour that day so he wasn't 100% familiar with it (or he was relatively new). And he showed up 15 min late...sigh. I think otherwise, they have good reviews.
Posted by
Reston, VA, USA
810 posts
We had a wonderful day tour with Provence Panorama - we did the Villages, monuments, wine & chocolate tour. In contrast to the previous poster, our driver was about 10 minutes early and did a great job getting us to all the differents sights - 8 or 9 during our day. We skipped the optional olive oil tasting, which probably gave us more time at the Roman sights [our particular interest]. We were there in early June, before the main tourist season, and we were the only two people on our tour.
Check their website; I think there are several tours that focus on some of the Luberon villages, some of which have a wine tasting as well, so take a look at their website and see what looks appealing. I'm sorry the previous poster had problems, but our tour was just great!
Posted by
Truro, NS, Canada
3941 posts
Yes - I was so pleased when I read the great reviews of the company, but then disappointed with our tour. I think we just had an unlucky day and a 'green' driver. In Nimes, we stopped first at Maison Carree (I forgot this) before heading to the arena. Had the driver been aware of the change in entry times at the arena (which you think would be basic knowledge for a tour guide), then we could have gone to the arena first. In the end, we ended up sitting in a little park eating ice cream for a half hour.
But they do have some amazing looking tours! We should have opted for a longer tour (ours was a five hour tour, of which about 70-90 min was driving between places) - lesson learned - for a tour that cost about $90 each...and we didn't get reimbursed for missing the arena tour (the cost of which was in the price)...it was disappointing.
Posted by
Murrieta, Ca
117 posts
We had the best tour of Provence villages with Claire. She will work with you to customize your tour for whatever you wish to see. She has a wonderful personality as well. She picked us up and was prompt. We ran about an hour over on the tour but she was more concerned with if that was OK with us. She was not in a hurry to just drop us off. If you check her out on trip advisor you will see she has 75 reviews and 74 of them are excellent. the other one was very good. Here is info. LA PROVENCE DE CLAIRE
[email protected]
Tél : +33 (0) 670 593 445
5 bd Jassot
84000 Avignon
France
Posted by
Brisbane, Australia
7175 posts
If you are free wheeling independent then this easy by train (& local buses)...
Day 1 Train to Arles for 6 nights
Day 2 Excursion to Nimes & bus to Pont du Gard
Day 3 Excursion to Avignon (& Orange)
Day 4 Bus to St Remy & Les Baux
Day 5 Excursion to Aix en Provence
Day 6 Excursion to Marseille
Day 7 Train to ???
Posted by
Milan, Italy
308 posts
Hi,
We did tours with Marlene Boyer. Here is her website http://www.experience-provence.fr/
She's extremely popular and offers a lot of interesting tours, check out the reviews on TA. Anyhow, contact her soon for October if you like her as she is a one woman show and books up fast.