Custom Self-Driving Tours of France

All five stars… except the following which we submit to help both KimKim and your future customers:
Transfer from airport to hotel was perfect. Hotel wonderful, quirky and close to the train station. Tell your customers to learn the train early to avoid pricy taxis.
While waiting for the hotel to be ready, we walked to the Big Bus and did a two hour lap around Paris. Excellent. But the hotel was not ready for us so we sat way too long. If I hadn’t been a bit pushy we might still be waiting! Finally we got a room at past three PM. They promised us noon!
Louvre and Notre Dame in one day was too much. Guide Ed was absolutely fantastic. Use him as often as you can.
Trip to Versailles was ok. We have seen palaces before and this one was similar. However the guide had too many people and she was often talking French to other people so our ear pieces were confusing. Back to Paris for a brief moment before dinner at Eiffel’s place. Fantastic. But you could suggest customers not flash the pink ticket to get off the elevator at the first stop and go to two for free for a couple of minutes. Then back to one for first rate dinner and view.
Transfers from hotel to train and from train to new hotel went well.
Hotel in Arramoush (sp) beautiful and we thank you for adding the breakfast. Both excursion trips were good and the free day on Sunday was a welcome break but a great day. Transfer to ferry went well and the driver helped us to the check in area. He received our last 5 Euro note!
We arrived in England broke! But found our hotel and an ATM.
I forgot to comment on Champagne; great tour. Great guide.
D-Day tour was great. But arrival time for lunch was so late, all restaurants were closed/soldout.
Mount St Michael has over 300 stairs and we are both still sore! Guide, Lou, was very good and interesting (and a cutie).
Thanks, Liz. We appreciate everything you did.
When in Southampton, or anywhere probably, don’t use MOXY by Marriott. Room smaller than a cruise cabin. No shelves, storage, phone, safe. Also no A/C!

Hotel Reviews

Les Villas d'Arromanches

Arromanches-les-Bains

We thought the commute to the meeting place in Bayaux was inconvenient but we are so lucky to have stayed in Arromanches. The hotel was fantastic. The breakfast excellent (except the day we checked out very early). Having a Sunday without plans worked out well. The 360 movie at the far end of town was excellent and tied together all of the D-Day sites we visited. Big lunches and light dinner was the plan most days.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Hotel OFF Paris Seine 4*

Paris

Fantastic views. Waving to the dinner boats as they went by was fun. Slightly disappointed that they didn’t have our room ready. At 9:30 they promised noon and even advised that the previous guests had already checked out. We napped by the pool and finally were invited to our room at 3:15 PM. Extremely long day as we flew overnight and were in France at 6 AM. Excellent breakfast three days but missed one day because our Champagne tour started early.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Activity Reviews

Mont-Saint-Michel Day Trip

Bayeux

Long drive but interesting. (We all slept on the return trip!) Lou was a great guide. She told us good stories and lied to us about just how many more steps! Note; this is hard on 71 year old people with aches and pains already.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Lou was a cutie!

Transport

Omaha & Utah Beach War History Day Trip

Bayeux

This is why we came! Guide was extremely good. Great stories. Enough time at each stop. We cried at the cemetery. And prayed at the chapel. Guide took special interest in helping us find anything to do with the USS Nevada. We located a plaque at Utah Beach saying the ship was 5.6 miles off shore. Great history. The last stop at a church that was used by the medics was a great story/coincidence. One problem was our lunch break was very late and none of the restaurants could seat us. Terrible “club sandwich” was thick stale bread and thin slices of dry ham/cheese.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Champagne Region Day Trip with Tastings

Paris

Long taxi to the meeting play. But the restaurant was open for breakfast. Scope out the others in the group because we split into two groups for the rest of the day. Small winery was absolutely fantastic. Informative and very good quality Champagne. Visit to Reims Notre Dame was good. Big winery was a bit overwhelming. Quick stop at Dom P’s grave was interesting and a scenic stop later on was nice. Very good lunch somewhere. Donna may have pictures to help identify.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Wish bus had a toilet.

Eiffel Tower Madame Brasserie Dinner

Paris

Dinner of a lifetime. Note that the ground floor meeting place looks closed until check in time when the blinds rise. Be in that line. Then go up and don’t get off at the first stop. Have a quick look at the second stop and come back down for the dinner reservation. Window view is well worth it.

Quality of Experience

Food

Versailles Essentials – Half-Day Tour

Paris

No rest room at the meeting point. Then long bus ride with many groups. Our guide was talking non stop to others as well as us. The free time in the gardens was good.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Private Notre-Dame & Sainte-Chapelle Visit

Paris

Long line at Saints-Chapelle so we skipped it. Long line at Notre Dame but worth it. Again Ed’s knowledge was great. Ed also found us a lovely restaurant for lunch in between and came back to pick us up prior to Notre Dame.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Private Louvre Museum Visit

Paris

Pricy taxi but once we found Ed, all was excellent. His guidance through the ancient Egyptian displays was top notch. He made sure we saw the “big three”. Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, and a horse with an angel on it.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Ed is attentive to our needs and pace.

Transport

Learn the train!

Free Day in Paris

Paris

Big Bus on our own. Pretty good way to see everything in order to plan the rest of the stay.

Lucie and Slimane from Kim Kim planned a fantastic trip for our family to Aix-En-Provence. The companies that they connected us to were all top-notch. The guides from A la Francais couldn't have been better. We spent 4 days with Adrien and 1 day with Greg. They were passionate about the experiences they provided to us, were well versed in history and regional information and were kind and accommodating throughout.

Our cooking class with Emmy who runs La Cuisine De Leki was magical. Her intent is not to have a technical cooking class, but to let you experience what it's like to be invited to a French home for a home cooked meal with friends or family, and she certainly succeeded.

Lucie and Slimane made this happen over months of planning with my Mom, with frequent changes and updates, but their patience and knowledge certainly turned this into a memorable trip.

The trip was great. Justine set up every step of the way. We started with a list of sites we wanted to see in Italy and France and a time frame for the trip. She took it from there.
We nicknamed the trip "Trains, planes and automobiles". She booked every step of the way. The hotel rooms were all 1st class and in "safe" areas. The chauffer transfers were on time and more than just a ride. One example was the transfer from our hotel in Paris to the train station. The driver picked us up on time, loaded our luggage and drove us to the train station. When we arrived, she grabbed our luggage and walked us into the train station to our train platform. This was above and beyond.
Our guided tours in Italy and France were personal guided tours. Not a group of 20 or 30 people with headsets trying to follow a wandering guide. By personal, I mean we were the only people on the tour with the guide. Very personal and informative. We had a one-on-one informative tour on all of the tours.
The train travel was all booked as first class and the car rentals were top of the line vehicles. We were given clear instructions on where to pick up and where to drop off the rentals.
We were able to enjoy a personalized tour of each of the sites we had chosen and did not have to worry about the travel or overnight details.
We would highly recommend KimKim and Justine for an enjoyable, personalized, and carefree vacation.