We always try to book a bike tour the first day in a new city. It helps you to get the lay of the…read moreland and allows you to cover more area than just walking. (We cannot say that about bus tours). This tour did not disappoint! We thoroughly enjoyed our bike tour with Joe on a beautiful August day. He fitted us with helmets, adjusted the seats on our comfortable bikes, and gave us an overview of the tour. Cleveland is a bikeable city and we felt very safe with Joe leading the way. We stopped at 15 to 20 points of historical and current interest. Joe was enthusiastic and gave us exactly what we expected, fresh air on our faces and a fun way to see and learn about Cleveland. Our Rating: A+, 5 stars

After coaster mecca (Cedar Point), a friend and I had about half a day to spend in Cleveland and…read moredecided to look for a sightseeing tour. Cleveland Bike Tours is one of two major bike tour operators in the city and one of just a handful of sightseeing tour operators there period. We'd never done a bike tour before, but they had great reviews on Trip Advisor and a really professional website, so we made last minute reservations for the Downtown tour. Likely due to the poor weather forecast, we were the only two on the tour. Private tour at group-subsidized prices! Score! It did rain a bit during the tour but thankfully it was just water so nobody died. When we started the ride (which were not on those skinny road bikes us tourists love to fall over on) I got nervous that I wasn't cut out for it. I'm in the worst shape of my life and had only been on a bike once in the past ten years. I was really feeling it in my legs and thought I had gotten in over my head after two days of walking and getting abused by coasters. Then I realized we had just biked up a hill... and felt like an idiot. I was so focused on remembering how to bike I hadn't noticed the incline. After the initial hill the ride wasn't strenuous AT ALL. Cleveland, for the most part, is flat as a pancake. Really, anyone can participate. Even lazy people. The tour gives a nice overview of some of the more prominent landmarks downtown, including some historic buildings, sports stadiums, public art, and monuments. While Cleveland may have some of the highest rates of poverty in the nation (for a city), you'd never know it from downtown, which is pristinely clean, beautiful, and filled with activity. I'd love to see a longer tour option in the future with interior stops at some of the historic churches, banks, and the three arcades. The standard tour will leave you wanting to revisit your stops so you can see things in more depth, which is great if you're looking for an introduction to the downtown area and have time to explore after. If you're more limited in time, you might want to look for a private guide for the day. Alternatively, check out CityProwl: free audio-guided tours of various parts of Cleveland. They would make a good supplement to the bike tours. You can find them in the iTunes podcast library if you search for CityProwl as one word. Cleveland has plenty to offer the out-of-towner who has a few days to kill, and the Cleveland Bike Tours offerings are a solid introduction to much of what's available outside University Circle. The tour hosts, Cleveland native couple, Anne and Joe, are fantastic. They were accommodating, polite, and fun. Anne was the primary guide for our tour and is especially energetic; you can really tell she loves her city, and as always the love a guide exudes for their home spills over to the rest of the group. While we probably won't be back to Ohio anytime soon (as Bostonians, we are HIGHLY suspect of midwesterner's overt politeness and eagerness to start conversations with strangers... we know you're all planning something sneaky!), should the call of the coasters become unbearable, we'll definitely be booking with Anne and Joe for another one of their tours.