Ultimate Bike Tours
Your Guide - Dave & Irena Simmons
If you’ve wanted to take a biking vacation, maybe even a once in a lifetime excursion, but didn’t know where to start, you came to the right site. Irena and I have been traveling our entire life. My informative years were in Germany, then Western Montana where I began cycling at 14 on a Gitane Tour de France. I’ve biked in Spain, Italy, Germany, and Ukraine having planned all aspects of my adventures.
Irena is from Kyiv, Ukraine and has travelled extensively throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Some of the best cycling destinations she’s visited many times are France, Spain, Poland, and Mallorca.
We love cycling, travel, and nature, and found a formula that meets all our requirements. There must be a lot of eye candy. UNESCO or historical sites, pristine natural beauty, superb local cuisines, a plethora of excellent quality accommodations, and personal safety are top priorities.
I like to ride 3 to 5 hours in the morning, and spend the afternoons with my family and friends exploring the area; and the evenings enjoying a superb dinner. It’s not uncommon for us to visit the local farmers markets and prepare a tasty breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Our friends and family have encouraged us to share with others our knowledge and experience by providing concierge style trips to places where other guides don’t go. We are flexible, where others aren’t, and none of them will take you to the best places, the remote places pure and pastoral. We will work with you to arrange from a shopping-list of routes, the best family side-excursions, site-seeing, accommodations and transportation, down to renting or shipping your bike.
We are conscious of all your apprehensions, and over a combined 70 years of traveling, our travel dreams gave come true, We want to offer you an experience that will surpass your wildest expectations.
Destinations
Learn how to travel to the most amazing destinations in the world, the gravel roads, mountain bike trails, and roads regardless of budget, find the best accommodations, family excursions, and know which attractions are most worth your time.
Travel Tips
Every trip you take you learn something to take forward to the next. We've compiled a list of great tips from our 70+ years of travel experience to share with you. We've learned from trips to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt,
Top 5 Travel Tips
We also take photos of our passports, drivers licenses, travel documents and keep them in our Goggle Docs and in files on our phones. You just never know when you need a backup and quick access.
About a week before each trip, we make a list of items we don’t want to forget – which one of us WILL forget if we don’t write them down. It’s easiest for us to have a travel list saved as a Google Doc so it can be accessed online, and updated as needed.
Invariably, weather changes. We all know. And we know to plan for those changes. It’s never good to be too hot, too cold, or wet. Be sure to bring some extra items for weather conditions you don’t expect, and know that you can often purchase what you need while on the trip.
If you’re at a checkout in a local shop or restaurant and the cashier asks if you’d like to pay in, say Euros or Dollars, say ‘Euros’. Your credit card company will automatically do the conversion into dollars and likely get you the best rate. Otherwise, you may be overcharged because the stores may use a higher conversion rate and fee.
Get into the habit of using sunscreen. We use it when we travel and are outside. You will be walking a lot more than you think, and even in overcast skies you can still get sunburned. Don’t forget to apply sunscreen to your hands and arms as well as your neck, chest, ears, and don’t forget to reapply.
Insect repellant is almost handy to have. There is nothing worse than being bitten if you’re on a mountain hike and wondering along a stream or river.
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