Fontainebleau and Vaux-Le-Vicomte Castle Small-Group Day Trip From Paris

Karim was amazing! Super funny and knowledgeable! And it goes without saying that Fontainebleau and Vaux-Le-Vicomte were fabulous, and the history for both was fascinating.

A great experience with a very knowledgeable guide.

Guide was knowledgeable, kind-hearted and patient. Viewing Fontainebleau and Vaux-de-Vicomte was very enjoyable.

This is a bit of an undiscovered tour, but both sites are spectacular! Karim was a very good guide and we really enjoyed our day. Kareem‘s secret lunch spot also was very nice.

Based on the amount we paid, we expected a much better experience. We only had a driver (no knowledgeable, experienced guide) in a very small, crowded van. Nothing was provided, not even water. I have never been on a group tour where water was not available. The driver, Clementine, spend most of the time talking about her personal life, one-on-one, to the person sitting in the front with her. When we arrived at the first stop, she used a 3-ring notebook to quickly describe the history of Fontainebleau, then left us on our own. We were given audio guides but no headphones. She expected us to hold the audio guides up to our ears, while also holding the water bottles we purchased at the vending machine, our phones/cameras and any other items we carried with us. The audio guides were useless because, if we had listened to the full description of each room, we would not have gotten through in the short time she allowed us. We, and others in our group, were never able to find the courtyard and some of the rooms. We joked that there should be a prize for the first person who asked a question the driver was actually able to answer. We arrived back in Paris nearly 2 hours early because the driver wanted to get ahead of traffic. Regarding the driving, she only came to a full stop at stop signs if there was another vehicle clearly visible. The round-abouts - scary!! This was a very expensive, very disappointing experience. I expected more from Viator.

This is an interesting all-day excursion from Paris. Our tour guide/driver was very good and gave us valuable historical information about both Fontainebleau and Vaux-Le-Vicomte. The morning was spent in Fontainbleau walking through the palace/castle as well as through all the Napoleon artifacts. We then took a one hour lunch break in the town of Fontainbeleau. In the afternoon, we went out to Vaux-Le-Comte which is one of the few remaining private chateaux in France. Drop dead beautiful gardens. During the course of our tour, we were greeted by Charles De Vogue who with his two brothers own and operates the Chateaux with a staff of around 30 people. It is a fulltime job maintaining and upgrading the Chateaux and its surrounding gardens. An altogether interesting and relaxing day taking us back into the history of 16th century France. I would recommend this day trip if you would like to get out of Paris. Peter S. Matorin

The tour was fine, but most of the tour was audio guide. Our tour guide was very sweet and helpful, but more like a glorified van driver.

Our guide Caesar was great. He was so knowledgeable and you could tell that he enjoyed his job. I would definitely recommend this trip. It’s broken up enough that you aren’t consistently standing. Unfortunately our group had 2 women that didn’t bother tipping, while not required Caesar went out of his way for the group and he deserved to be tipped. Thank you Caesar, sorry for the selfishness of the women.

Will was very personable and ensured we had a good time. He provided good information about the sites and instructions for meeting times and places.

Very enjoyable and interesting! Fontainebleau was gorgeous and Vaux-Le-Vicomte was Versailles on a manageable scale! The small group was perfect. Our guide, Will, was full of fun facts and very nice.