We take thousands of families on active trips around the globe every year; in fact, it’s one of our most popular programs! Many of our families have a lot of questions, because they want to ensure their multisport trip or biking trip will be fun for both kids and adults and will hold their children’s attention.

A common question families ask is: Is childcare available during the trip and will there be other children my kids’ ages?

Childcare is not included as part of Backroads’ family adventures; however, that doesn’t mean that we can’t help you find childcare if that’s a need for your family. Many of our hotels on family trips do offer childcare services or we can explore other English-speaking options in the area. We do not book the care for you but can direct you to the appropriate contacts.

Remember, our Trip Leaders are not charged with childcare, but on active family trips there is a Trip Leader dedicated just to the children to create age-appropriate opportunities wherever we’re traveling.

Second, you’re certainly welcome to ask your Trip Consultant about other children’s ages who have booked the trip. Just keep in mind it could change prior to departure. One of the best parts of a Backroads active family vacation is the friendships that kids develop with each other. You may find a new “pen pal” that your child can stay in touch with for years to come.

We have lots of fun family trips available this summer from bike tours and hiking tours of the US National Parks to multisport adventures in Hawaii, Costa Rica, Panama and more. Take a look at our Family Trip Advisor to get customized trip recommendation for your family.

For more information about our family adventures, please visit www.backroads.com/family-trips or call us at 800-462-2848 daily from 7 a.m.- 5 p.m. Pacific time.

Traveling to Cuba is a rare opportunity, but Backroads has worked with the US government to open the doors to this mysterious country. Thanks to a recently approved People-to-People license, we’re excited to offer confirmed trips to Cuba in May and June of 2013, as well as opportunities December 2013 through February 2014.

On this eight-day tour of Cuba, you’ll get to delve deeply into Cuban culture and interact with locals, a hallmark of Backroads’ tours. The itinerary will include visits to museums, art studios, coffee plantations, farms and national parks.

The highlights of our trip to Cuba include:

• Delving into Hemingway’s Cuba during a visit to the Museo Ernest Hemingway
• Discussing Cuba’s rich arts heritage with artists at private studios and a community art project
• Learning about Cuban enterprise from budding entrepreneurs, including owners of private restaurants (paladares) and private room rentals (casa particulares)
• Chatting with local farmers, cowboys and coffee plantation workers
• Talking conservation with local naturalists
• Learning about Afro-Cuban religious traditions with a Santeria priest
• Meeting musicians, dancers and performers from such groups as the Yoruba Association of Cuba and the Spanish Ballet of Cuba

As the primary focus of this Cuba tour is education and an exchange of information about cultures, it will not be nearly as active as the typical Backroads hiking tour or biking tour. There will be opportunities for some walking, however. Additionally, accommodations and food will be simpler than Backroads’ Premiere Inn tours and Classic Inn tours.

To reserve a spot or for more information, please call us at 800-462-2848 daily from 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific time. We anticipate demand will exceed capacity, so don’t wait too long to experience this once-in-a-lifetime travel opportunity! Visit the Backroads’ website at www.backroads.com/trips/ACUQ for a more detailed itinerary and departure dates.

We think food and active travel go perfectly together. For one, you can burn off most of the calories you consume dining on delicious local cuisine and two, there’s no better way to experience the true flavor of a region than through its local fare.

Backroads offers several hiking tours and biking tours that have a big food focus whether it’s taking a cooking class, shopping the local market or dining with locals. Here are some of our favorite active tours for foodies:

Puglia Biking Tour

Tour the Puglia region of Italy by bike and experience all of its gastronomic delights! On our 6-day, 5-night Puglia Bike Tour, you’ll travel the Italian Adriatic Coast, which brings to mind the whitewashed coastal villages of Greece. Olive trees and fennel stretch as far as the eye can see interspersed with age-old farmhouses. You’ll sample a full-bodied primitivo and other notable vini Pugliesi, cook with local Pugliese chefs during a culinary lesson, learn how mozzarella is made and enjoy organic homemade Pugliese dishes. The Puglia Biking tour runs April-June and August-October.

Peru Walking & Hiking Tour

You may be surprised to hear that our 7-day, 6-night Peru hiking tour also has a food focus in addition to the amazing Machu Picchu ruins and active Andes activities.  Some of the culinary experiences in which you’ll indulge in Peru include sipping a pisco sour at the Cusco Museum, shopping the lively Pisac market and take a cooking class with a local Peruvian chef from Sol y Luna. Then get ready to burn all the calories you’ve consumed during two days of hiking to Machu Picchu. The Peru walking tour runs March-October, as well as some dates in December.

Tuscany Walking & Cooking Tour

New for 2013 is our Tuscany Walking and Cooking Tour. Tuscany has always been a popular destination for us and guests are always asking for recipes and techniques to recreate the mouth-watering Tuscan dishes at home, so we’ve created a Tuscany tour focused around one of everyone’s favorite highlights of the area: its glorious food! On our Tuscany cooking & walking tour, you’ll have the opportunity to cook side by side with Italian “le nonne” (grandmas),  chat up a Tuscan butcher about meats, have lunch under the grape vines, enjoy a private wine talk, sample honey made by monks at Monte Oliveto Maggiore, visit a working cheese farm and much more! The 6-day, 5-night trip runs May-July, September and October.

Did we make you hungry?! Go ahead and reserve your spot on one of these fantastic food-focused tours for 2013. You’ll come home full of culinary inspiration and stories to share with family and friends. Call us today at 800-462-2848 7 a.m.- 5 p.m. Pacific.

Here at Backroads, we believe we’re the best choice for an active vacation, be it a walking tour in Europe or a bike tour through southeast Asia. Sure, lots of active travel companies make claims about why their service is the best, but we can prove it! How? The Backroads’  Quality Index, a way to demonstrate to you the true differences that set Backroads’ active vacations apart from the rest.

In Part 1 of our Quality Index blog post, we’ll share with you 6 reasons we believe Backroads is the leader of the pack:

Never Subcontracted – We run all of our own active tours around the world, allowing us to control the quality. We never subcontract to other vendors.

Two Support Vans – On all of our bike trips, walking trips and multisport trips, we support you with two vans*. That way, if part of the group needs a break, they can head back to the hotel, while the other van supports those still walking or biking. It also allows us to provide snacks, fix bikes, etc. without sacrificing service to everyone else.

Three Trip Leaders – By sending three Trip Leaders on EVERY tour, we ensure that everyone is catered to. Our active trips have a 6:1 guest to leader ratio, and our travelers consistently score our Trip Leaders 9.7 out of 10, saying they “make all the difference.”

Local Expertise – On our international trips, we bring along local guides to pair with our Trip Leaders to give you an authentic experience of the region where you’re traveling.

The Right Bikes – Our bike fleet is the best in the active travel industry with more than 4000 expertly maintained bikes, including our custom titanium Backroads bike, our top-rated Specialized S-Works Roubaix and women’s Ruby Pro, and our Co-Motion Periscope Torpedo tandem.

Thoughtful Trip Design – We employ a team of nine trip designers, lead by our founder and CEO Tom Hale who brings three decades of experience, ensuring you truly get to see the “back roads” and the best of each area.

What is your favorite part of the Backroads experience? To experience our quality firsthand, call us today at 800-462-2848 7 a.m.- 5 p.m.  Pacific to get start selecting the perfect active tour for you.

*95% of Backroads guests travel with the support of two or more vans and three leaders. The remaining 5% are on trips with very few guests where only one van and two leaders are needed to maintain our high service standards.

Dreaming of an adventure to New Zealand full of dramatic waterfalls, lush valleys and breathtaking vistas at every turn? If you travel to New Zealand with Backroads, the legendary Paul Smith just might be one of your Trip Leaders.

A history major and a former minor league baseball player, Paul recently celebrated leading his 300^th trip to New Zealand and is a true expert on this gorgeous country. With 22 years as a Backroads leader who’s led more adventure tours in Backroads’ history, it’s safe to say he’s seen it all.

Paul didn’t start his Backroads journey in New Zealand, however. His first start was a bit of a rough initiation with a camping trip on the Russian River. He and his co-leader (now his wife and mother of his two sons) forgot their sleeping bags and slept wrapped in tablecloths in their van while it rained outside. He hasn’t forgotten his sleeping bag since!

Paul’s attention to detail, witty humor, knowledge of the local haunts and an uncanny ability to discern the needs of each guest is well-known and celebrated. During his 22 years with Backroads, Paul has fallen in love with Chinese culture and the joy of riding a bike through its sometimes crazy countryside; learned about world religions by leading Bhutan walking tours and Bali bike tours, where he became fascinated with prayer wheels and Hindu gods; and lived each summer in the San Juan islands, knowing the way the light looks on the water at all hours of the day, from all viewpoints, like a local knows it.

Plus, Paul can add to his list of credentials that he’s done more laps around the South Island of New Zealand than anyone in Backroads history! “All it takes is a single visit to fall in love with New Zealand’s extraordinary scenery and down-to-earth welcoming people,” says Paul. “And if you’re like me, you’ll find it’s a destination you dream of returning to again and again.”

Interested in taking a New Zealand walking tour or New Zealand bike tour with Paul? Give us a call at 800-462-2848 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific.

Have you taken a Backroads walking trip or Backroads bike trip with Paul? Give us some firsthand insight to this wonderful Backroads Trip Leader! Here’s to another 300 trips!

2013 has arrived and we know you like to travel as much as we do. So we’ve listed out some of our top 10 New Year’s resolutions specifically dedicated to travel. Lots of people make “travel” itself a New Year’s resolution, but we wanted to go deeper and make some suggestions of how to improve your travel experience in 2013.

Here are Backroads’ top 10 New Year’s travel resolutions:

1)      Travel somewhere you’ve never been – At Backroads we travel to hundreds of destinations around the globe, and we can help you find a bike tour or hiking tour to a place you’ve yet to discover. Instead of taking the same trip you do every year, be bold and try something new!

2)      Travel somewhere unexpected – Sure, everyone wants to take a Tuscany bike tour or a Provence walking tour, but consider traveling to a location more off the beaten path. For 2013, Backroads has introduced bike trips to Myanmar, for example, a country that has largely been closed to the modern world for many years. By biking through Myanmar, you will truly discover an “undiscovered” world untouched by tourism.

3)      Add activity to your trip – At Backroads, we believe half the fun of travel is the way you travel. Step out of the car or tour bus and hop on a bike, walk or even kayak down the river. Your travel experience will be so much richer out in the open air with some activity mixed in. You’ll even be able to enjoy all the gourmet dinners we provide without the guilt!

4)      Bring your kids along – Afraid to travel with your kids? Don’t be! We offer wonderful family adventures that will make a trip with the kids a great experience. Our family bike tours and family walking tours are designed with lots of kid-friendly activities, whether it’s a scavenger hunt, eating gelato in Sicily or fencing in the Loire Valley, that will entertain and educate not just them, but you, as well. Browse our family adventures.

5)      Try a solo trip – Traveling alone can be a life-changing experience and you can do it without worry with Backroads’ Singles + Solos travel program. We offer trips around the world designed for traveling solo. You’ll enjoy meeting other solo travelers on the trip and get plenty of time to explore the world on your own with the unparalleled service, support and guidance of the Backroads team. Browse our singles trips.

6)      Travel at a different time of year – Always take a summer vacation? Try traveling at the holidays to create once-in-a-lifetime memories. Paris in the spring? Yes, it’s lovely, but Europe in the fall can also be a wonderful time to travel. Mix it up this year!

7)      Try a new food – Backroads offers gourmet meals at many Michelin-starred restaurants and plenty of opportunities to try food local to your destination. It might be a little out of your comfort zone, but be brave and try a new food or dish. You just might be surprised at how good it tastes!

8)      Try something adventurous – Add some adventure to your travel! With Backroads, you can fence in Loire Valley, zip line in Costa Rica, hike a volcano in Hawaii and Sicily, visit ancient temples and the list goes on. No ho hum vacations for us! Make your travel exciting in 2013!

9)      Engage the locals – To really get the most out of travel, try to immerse yourself in the local culture. When you bike or hike a destination, you’re more likely to stop and have a conversation with the farmer selling produce by the road or chat with the couple next to you at the café. Make an effort to talk to the locals, ask them about the area and their favorite things to do. You’ll likely come away with a new world view.

10)   Learn a new language – It’s easier to engage the locals if you know a little bit of their language. Challenge yourself a few months before your trip to learn some key phrases in the language of the region you’ll be visiting. Not only will you feel more confident and comfortable, you may just be inspired to learn the language fluently.

Have you set any resolutions related to travel? Let us know what they are and if we can help you meet them! Give us a call 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific any day of the week if we can help you stick to those travel resolutions with a Backroads bike tour or Backroads hiking tour. Happy New Year!

You’ve heard about Paris in the springtime, right? Well, that holds for most of Europe, as well! We love traveling Europe in the spring, as the weather is just right for an active tour, and most of the crowds haven’t arrive quite yet. Of course, we like to take the “backroads,” so you’ll mostly avoid the crowds with us anyway!

Some other benefits of taking a European hiking tour or a European bike tour during this time of year include the fact that airfares are often lower in spring (not to mention there are fewer people on the planes) and you have a better chance of meeting more locals. Most Europeans vacation in summer, plus the nice weather has them out and about, allowing you to strike up a conversation as you hike past or hop off your bike.

Where to go? Here are some of Backroads’ top active tours for Europe in the spring:

Loire Valley – Can you picture this magnificent land of castles in all its glory with lush green grasses, gardens in full bloom and migrating birds? That’s the Loire Valley in spring. Take a Loire Valley biking tour with us for the chance to see these beautiful castles in the open air, indulge in top-notch French cuisine, explore vineyards, and if you take our Loire Valley family biking tour, try your hand at fencing! The Loire Valley tours run March through October 2013.

Provence – Ah, Provence, what isn’t there to like? On a spring Provence tour, expect to see the cherry orchards and almond trees blossoming as you hike Provence or bike Provence under a bright sunny sky. Try our new Provence Biking tour, which takes you from the windswept Alpilles to perched Luberon Villages. Pedal past red-tiled roofs, vineyards and 12^th century castles and ruins, and enjoy delectable French cuisine. Other options include our Provence Walking and Hiking Tour, our Provence and Costa Brava Walking and Hiking Tour, which takes you into Spain, and our original Provence Biking Tour through the Cotes du Rhone vineyards, Crillon Le Brave and the Luberon.

Tuscany – Travel Tuscany in March and look forward to blooming azaleas and camellias to add to the overwhelming beauty already offered by the Italian countryside. Whether you like to walk, bike or cook, Backroads has a Tuscany tour for you! Our new Tuscany Cooking and Walking tour lets you cook with Italian nonne (grandmas), sample honey made by monks, tour a working cheese farm and work off all the calories as you hike to your next destination.

Spain – Can you smell the orange trees in bloom, yet? You will when you arrive in Spain in spring! The almond trees, as in France, cherry trees and camellias are also blooming. There’s also a host of religious and secular festivals that happen in spring, so as you walk or bike past a small town or village, you just might come across a wonderful local celebration. Backroads offers many Spain tours like Andalucia Biking, Mallorca Biking, Pyrenees to Costa Brava Biking and Spain Hiking. Which will you choose?

Greece – Our Greece Biking Tour takes you to the gorgeous island of Crete, where spring means lots and lots of wildflowers. What better way to see them than pedaling past and smelling their sweet scent? On our Crete biking tour, you can ride coast to coast, relax at the beach, see ancient ruins and sample olive oil. Departures begin in March.

What do you bring to mind when you think of Europe in the springtime? If you’ve never experienced it, please join us on a European biking tour or a European walking tour and enjoy this wonderful time of year to travel across the pond. For more information on booking an active European vacation in the spring, give us a call 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Pacific at 800-462-2848. See you beside the blooming f