We are Steve and Lisa Bruns, from Eaton, Ohio. In May 2015,
we joined 20 other travelers, along with our tour guides, Antoine and Åsa, for our second Rick Steves tour, a trip to Paris and the Heart of France.
This website is a scrapbook of our memories from that trip.
We have put it together to help those who might be considering taking this tour to decide whether it's what they're looking for. Other tour
scrapbooks on the Rick Steves website have been a great help to
us in planning our trips and we want to return the favor.
If you have any questions about our experiences on this tour or comments about this website, please feel free to
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The scheduled tour started with two days of the highlights of Paris, then traveled south to Guedelon, where historians are building a medieval castle using only the techniques and tools of the time. We spent that night in the old Roman town of Bourges, where we saw a cathedral to rival Notre Dame. We moved into the Loire Valley, stopping first at the Chateau of Selles sur Cher, a magnificent old home being restored by its owner, who is developing his own winery. We sampled some of his wines and some local goat cheeses.
Our next stop was the magnificent Chambord, largest of the great Loire Valley chateaux, said to have be designed by Leonardo de Vinci, who had been recruited to nearby Amboise, by French King Francois I. We spent two nights in Amboise, visiting Leonardo's home, seeing the unique cave homes, Francois' castle, and eating some great food. The next day, we took a day trip to visit lovely Chenonceau.
The next morning we traveled to Brittany for a quick lunch and then on to awe-inspiring Mont St-Michel. Avoiding the day crowds, we spent the night on the island and had the place nearly to ourselves for a guided tour the next morning.
It was then on to Normandy, where our first stop was Bayeaux, where we saw the 1000 year old Bayeaux Tapestry which chronicled the Norman invasion of Great Britain in 1066. We spent the night in Arromanches, which had been right in the center of the D-Day attacks in 1944. A local guide took us the next day to a German cemetery, St. Lo, Utah Beach, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and the American Cemetery above Omaha Beach.
The next day we visited Claude Monet's home and gardens in Giverney, and then returned to Paris, where we had a final meal together before the end of the tour.
Lisa and I came to Paris a couple of days early in order to take a photo tour with a local photographer. We extended our trip in order to visit Disneyland Paris, the wonderfully preserved medieval town of Bruges, Belgium, and Amsterdam.
We are enthusiastic Rick Steves tour travelers, and are planning our third tour in 2016. Both tours that we have taken shared these characteristics:
1. The hotels are always in great locations and make it easy to see lots of great things during our free time;
2. The tour guides and bus drivers have been wonderful; and
3. The tour itineraries are very comprehensive and by the end, especially if you've made productive use of your free time, there's very little left unseen.
The only things we would change would be these:
1. I would have liked to have spent a lot more time at the D-Day sites. Our time there felt very rushed, and we were unable to see even one of the excellent museums in the area.
2. Several of the dinners that we had as a group which were included in the cost of our tour were, while not terrible, somewhat disappointing. On the other hand, using recommendations from our guides and from the Rick Steves tour book, meals we had at local restaurants were memorable.
3. We made the mistake of scheduling our trip during Pentecost, a major French holiday. The Sunday before Pentecost was the day we visited Monet's home and it was packed with local visitors to such an extent that it was difficult to enjoy the visit. We had planned to spend the next day, the actual holiday, at Paris Disneyland, but learned that crowds there were nearly the worst of the year, leading us to spend an extra day in Paris (not a bad thing) and adding an extra day to the trip.
Finally, train travel in Europe is so easy and reasonably priced, we added short trips to Bruges and Amsterdam, and we had a really great time in both cities and heartily recommend them to other travelers. We made extensive use of Rick Steves' tour guidebooks for walking tours, top sights, restaurants, and B & B's, and were never disappointed.
Our next stop was the magnificent Chambord, largest of the great Loire Valley chateaux, said to have be designed by Leonardo de Vinci, who had been recruited to nearby Amboise, by French King Francois I. We spent two nights in Amboise, visiting Leonardo's home, seeing the unique cave homes, Francois' castle, and eating some great food. The next day, we took a day trip to visit lovely Chenonceau.
The next morning we traveled to Brittany for a quick lunch and then on to awe-inspiring Mont St-Michel. Avoiding the day crowds, we spent the night on the island and had the place nearly to ourselves for a guided tour the next morning.
It was then on to Normandy, where our first stop was Bayeaux, where we saw the 1000 year old Bayeaux Tapestry which chronicled the Norman invasion of Great Britain in 1066. We spent the night in Arromanches, which had been right in the center of the D-Day attacks in 1944. A local guide took us the next day to a German cemetery, St. Lo, Utah Beach, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and the American Cemetery above Omaha Beach.
The next day we visited Claude Monet's home and gardens in Giverney, and then returned to Paris, where we had a final meal together before the end of the tour.
Lisa and I came to Paris a couple of days early in order to take a photo tour with a local photographer. We extended our trip in order to visit Disneyland Paris, the wonderfully preserved medieval town of Bruges, Belgium, and Amsterdam.
We are enthusiastic Rick Steves tour travelers, and are planning our third tour in 2016. Both tours that we have taken shared these characteristics:
1. The hotels are always in great locations and make it easy to see lots of great things during our free time;
2. The tour guides and bus drivers have been wonderful; and
3. The tour itineraries are very comprehensive and by the end, especially if you've made productive use of your free time, there's very little left unseen.
The only things we would change would be these:
1. I would have liked to have spent a lot more time at the D-Day sites. Our time there felt very rushed, and we were unable to see even one of the excellent museums in the area.
2. Several of the dinners that we had as a group which were included in the cost of our tour were, while not terrible, somewhat disappointing. On the other hand, using recommendations from our guides and from the Rick Steves tour book, meals we had at local restaurants were memorable.
3. We made the mistake of scheduling our trip during Pentecost, a major French holiday. The Sunday before Pentecost was the day we visited Monet's home and it was packed with local visitors to such an extent that it was difficult to enjoy the visit. We had planned to spend the next day, the actual holiday, at Paris Disneyland, but learned that crowds there were nearly the worst of the year, leading us to spend an extra day in Paris (not a bad thing) and adding an extra day to the trip.
Finally, train travel in Europe is so easy and reasonably priced, we added short trips to Bruges and Amsterdam, and we had a really great time in both cities and heartily recommend them to other travelers. We made extensive use of Rick Steves' tour guidebooks for walking tours, top sights, restaurants, and B & B's, and were never disappointed.