Porto Downtown and Sightseeing Bike Tour

This was a fantastic experience. Our guide Juan was so knowledgeable and interesting. We learnt loads. He answered all our questions and he was funny and warm and welcoming. He kept us safe and delivered a perfect introduction to Porto. The bikes worked well. Our guide also provided excellent recommendations of local places to eat and catch live music. All of his recommendations were spot on, especially the food ones. Cannot recommend this tour company and this guide enough. Perfect.

You finish on a very long uphill; I did one in Lisbon and the company had us leave our bikes at the bottom of the hill and a truck takes them back. I consider myself in pretty good shape. I walk every where and bike a bit at home but this ride kicked my butt, I went home and napped for 3 hours afterwards. The guide was nice and knowledgeable but not a natural tour guide in terms of his personality. I was the only person on the tour so it was great they didn’t cancel the tour. I am not sure if he asked me one question the entire time. There weren’t many planned stops along the way so I asked to stop for a water break and to take photos. I had to ask the guide to snap a few photos of me, he didn’t offer. I think this guide is probably used to doing the longer tours that might be a few days long and more about the bike ride than the tour.

Tour guide company was surprised to see us even though I was inundated with emails about the tour prior to the trip. John, our guide, seemed like he wanted to be anywhere else but there. Was on his phone any chance he could get. Did not even ask me my name or tell me his (my husband and I were the only two in the group) . He had no idea of our ability level. Did not even try to adjust seat height. Initially he gave us a few tidbits of information that my husband had already read. We then proceeded to ride for 45 minutes past Coast Guard stations, museums, churches, castles with no information. I could’ve turned left and completely left the group and he would not even have known. When we stopped for coffee, John told us to go find a table and he would grab the coffees for us after sitting waiting for him for almost 20 minutes. My husband went and found him and he asked my husband if he had paid the bill and was ready to go. It was all we could do not to just walk away and leave him there with the bikes. We could’ve rented bikes on our own and got as much information. We are avid, experience, cyclist. However, this route was 70% unsafe for cyclist. 45 minutes of the 3 1/2 hour tour was unsafe for cyclist. In the route that he took, that was safe, he didn’t give us any information about the surrounding area… The Dura river, castle, etc. most of the information he gave us my husband had already read prior to coming to Porto. I have had many cycling tours in Europe, and I have to say this one was Very disappointing!