Pros: nice staff, knowledgeable on the city history, great views, thank God there was more than one guide with our group of 7.
Cons: 1. location of staging area does not allow for testing appropriate seat height fitting and the suggestion I got from all the guides on choosing a seat height did not work for me. I did not find out though until we began riding in the busy traffic street near the shop, the seat was too high, I could not reach the pedals. Dangerous, no way to tell anyone, so I stopped to adjust it, literally all of 15 seconds and the group was gone. No guide behind the last person, me, so I had to figure out where they went. Not a good way to start.
2. The flat open plaza used to practice and get to know the handling of the E bike is several blocks of busy street traffic away from the staging area. Dangerous to have to figure out the bike, the seat height when in busy traffic, before getting to the area to practice, seems backwards to me. Suggestion: fit the bike seat height in an area that is flat and allows for practice of using an E bike BEFORE entering traffic.
3. Poor awareness of where to talk at a site. 2 to 3 stops, there was a lot of noise because we were too close to the noise source and there were areas further away from the noise we could have parked to hear the history.
Suggestion: Have 2 guides. I think the norm for this company is 1 guide per group. This group had 3, the lead Bernardo, Iris in training and a third whose client no showed so she joined our group. Winding our way through busy city streets, single file makes the group long and the person at the end loses sight of the guide and the group especially when turning corners or waiting for traffic to allow one to change lanes, merge etc. While it didn’t help me to have the 3 guides when we initially started the tour, it was certainly helpful during the rest of the tour.
Thank goodness everyone survived, no one got hurt, but the potential from the get go is there. There are things the company can do to make it safer. There are a few companies that do this tour. When shopping around for this city bike tour, find out if riders can adjust seat height and practice in an area BEFORE getting into the street.