13-Day Tour Northern Spain & Portugal

Customer Reviews

• CW

  Colleen

  · October 14th, 2023
  Sub standard- not what we paid for. Booked small group tour and paid good money 18 months in advance through Luxury Escapes, but communication only received when we contacted Julia. Names of hotels not advised, except for in Madrid but we arrived to find the hotel was different from email. Same experience as other reviewers: Luxury Escapes sell this as a specialized tour but company tagged us with a large group of around 40 and provided very average accommodation- I assume to allow for bulk rates- and we were told that hotels were full so put up with rooms provided. Luxury Escapes should be embarrassed but they said not their problem; told us to speak with the tour guide which we did, but food and accommodation got worse. Food provided was budget eg. potato broth, potato pie, boiled pork swimming in oil, liquid rice pudding. Breakfast limited (almost always scrambled egg and processed bacon, maybe peas and carrots thrown in plus same fruit, yoghurt and pastries every day) and chaotic because of the large numbers from Julia. Food we paid for ourselves at restaurants was great. Guide friendly but spoke limited English and we were dumped in a lot of venues with 'free time' away from centres with little/no guidance , so we googled many of the sites for information and caught cabs because most hotels weren't central. Tried to contact Julia but 'out of office reply' was that they were closed until the end of August (this was in October) and the phone line was always busy. This is NOT a 'Luxury' Escape. Rather plan your journey, choose good hotels and take a bus/train or drive between destinations. Do day trips with knowledgeable guides and eat at restaurants/ taverns. Positives: Some private tours included in the package were good, especially boat trip in Ria de Arosa to mussel farm was so much fun. Recommend Santander, Porto and Nazare for beaches. Santiago de Compostela , Fatima, Santiago de Compostela and day trip to Caceres for history, religion and architecture. Lisbon also good.
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  Trip date: October 2023
• 

  Manreet

  · April 17th, 2023
  The itinerary of this tour was excellent and 2 of 3 guides were great but the guides changed through the tour and the passengers were told the day before the change. The same thing occurred with passengers transferring 3-4 times in 16 days. I requested an English speaking tour but I was the only one amongst 20 Spanish speaking passengers and although the guide did his best, the atmosphere is not the same and it is difficult to make connections with the other passengers. There was another coach with only English speaking passengers but I was not allowed to join them. Throughout Spain not a single hotel had 1 Engligh speaking TV channel and subtitle function to English was disabled in all hotels. There was also no tea/coffee making facilities in the room and I paid for 4 star hotels so I had expected this would be provided.
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  Julia Travel commented on this review

  Thank you for sharing your insights. We apologize for the challenges you faced with guide changes and language discrepancies, but please take into account that you booked a bilingual tour (Spanish/English) Your feedback on the lack of English TV... Show more
  Trip date: April 2023
• JW

  Julie

  · May 28th, 2019
  1. Too much time on bus 2. Extra excursions should be presented with package as optional and to prepay 3. For amount of money spent should not have to fork out cab fares. 4. Breakfast was poor at some hotels 5. Princess’s Madrid very poor quality hotel- bad customer service 6. I was not informed that I was the only English speaking person on the tour... stressful and felt cheated out of explanations at sights. Guide would talk 10-15 minutes in Spanish and maybe say few sentences in English. So I know I wasn’t getting all the historical information. 7. Too much time given at spots with little to do. Felt like I waited way too much time waiting around to get back on the bus.
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  Trip date: May 2019