Peg Bauer

Review of Fat Tire Bike Tours, City Segw...

We took the Paris night bike tour hoping to get a ...

We took the Paris night bike tour hoping to get a good overview of basic sites and more importantly get a feel for biking around the city. This was such a disappointing experience. I am honestly surprised by the 5 star reviews. My husband and I have taken bike tours in other cities before and found them to be a great experience. From the moment we showed up at the Fat Tire meet up spot, things seemed really disorganized and chaotic. We were rushed to get bikes and bright yellow safety vests (which I am not mocking, it was a good idea to be very visible given the terrible instructions we were given at very busy traffic intersections during rush hour) and given very limited instructions. Our tour guide was a very sweet and personable (college-age I'm guessing?) woman that I believe was in over her head. She made it clear that the locals do not like the tour company and will give us a hard time wherever we go. That being said, we were instructed to push our way through intersections, block crosswalks, cut cars and pedestrians off and generally be a nuisance. Methinks not indeed! No wonder the locals don't like the tour company! The group was way too large to navigate the route that was chosen for us. A tour like this should have ten people tops and ours had 20-22 people in it. We were mortified at every turn. To make things worse, our guide thought it necessary (and funny?) to deliver her limited tour information in a really bad French accent. If I was a local (or another tourist) walking by, I'd be a little peeved. We come to cities to learn about the culture and the sights and respect the environment in which we are inserting ourselves - not mock it and be a nuisance! The tour was so bad, we tried to skip the boat portion at the end, but couldn't because we had to return the bikes to the shop with everyone else. We drank our free wine and looked longingly at the people sitting on the river's edge drinking and eating and having what had to be a better time than us. Maybe it was us, maybe it was an off day, who knows. Perhaps Paris is not that bike friendly of a city. Either way, we did not enjoy the night bike tour.