Stresa and Lake Maggiore

Jennifer Wotherspoon

A wonderful holiday, very efficiently organised and very amiable company

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Gordon Tuff

I have already completed your post holiday review.

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Entwistle

Well organised tour, in a small group. Knowledgable and enthusiastic tour manager.

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N Rogers-Davis

Lovely trip with very good and personable guide (Stella). Good hotel (Grand Hotel Bristol) with great view over lake - for which we booked at time of reservation and paid extra. Not rushed with plenty of free time to do what we wanted in Stresa such as going to other locations on Lake including Santa Catarina and Isola Madre - both excellent. Other hotels for one-night stopovers in Colmar and Dijon were good, with free time being available to spend a decent spell in the lovely old town of Dijon. However, our experience with sending out a case a week before our trip through First Luggage was a horrendous and extremely stressful experience - as it was for others in our group - and, for that reason, we would never go on another Great Rail Journeys holiday in Europe while they still use First Luggage. FL never replied to any of our communications, and we were unable to speak to anybody in the back office handling our luggage. Trying to complete their online forms was virtually impossible in view of their errors in coding. Until all info was inputted online, First Luggage would not issue labels for case.

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Howard Ferdinando

Good in parts, poor in other areas. The good: The booking (back in 2019) was efficient. Rearrangements (twice) because of COVID (and therefore cancelled trips) was carried out well. Indeed, at one point in the process, with the originally booked tour now no longer running, we were upgraded to a better tour for relatively little extra cost. The trip itself in September 2022 was good in parts – the weather was great, and travel on the continental trains was enjoyable. The main hotel was pretty good, the overnight stops less so, but still acceptable. The arranged tours were well planned. The poor: 1. The itinerary was sent a few days in advance, but clearly had not been checked. One day was duplicated, a second missed. Three attempts were made, and all were inaccurate, as was the itinerary on the app. Our Tour Manager distributed a finalised version, but here too there were errors. However, on the whole, the Tour Manager was excellent. 2. Our luggage failed to arrive at the destination hotel – we had followed instructions to the letter, but had to wait three days (nearly half way into our week at Stresa), causing stress plus time and money to buy emergency clothes etc. 3. The transfer at Paris on the way out went wrong. The transfer coach failed to turn up on time, and the connection was missed. Subsequent trains were fully booked, and we all had to kill 7 hours or so in Paris, eventually arriving at our overnight stop in Colmar after midnight. 4. The transfer at Paris on the return leg was for some unexplained reason on a shared coach with a large group from Rail Discoveries. However, we were just thankful that this time we completed the transfer in time to catch the scheduled train! In summary: For the money paid, the standards should be better. This was our first GRJ experience, and from the way we feel at present, probably the last. If only GRJ were to pay greater attention to detail, they could be so much better.

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Roderick Milne

The organisation and tour manager Stella were perfect but not the Hotel Bristol. Unhelpful staff old fashioned rooms with showers that were so small we couldn't get in it. Change you hotel for a modern one and it would be perfect

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