I was traveling with a group of friends and we booked a private bus tour with Warsaw Behind the…read moreScenes. The initial communication and booking process was excellent. The price was fair and we were all excited.
The day of the tour, we agreed to meet at 10am in front of the building where we were staying. My friends and I came down at 9:55am and started waiting. At 10:05am, we became a little worried and we sent one of us group to check a main street because we were concerned that the guide might not have seen us. It wasn't until about 10:10am that he finally showed up. I had provided my number in advance and thought that it was unprofessional that the guide was late and didn't even try to contact us.
Anyway, that's when the walking portion of the tour began. We could tell almost immediately that it was going to be a long day. I don't mean long as in hours because as it turns out, even though the guide came 10 minutes late, he ended the tour almost 10 minutes earlier than our assigned time. But long as in unengaging and hard to understand.
Maybe his English was not that great. He spoke so slowly and it seemed tiring for him. I had told him from the start that we were hungry and were hoping (since this is a private tour) to get some food. That seemed to throw him off a bit and after over an hour of walking around, he finally suggested that we should purchase some very poor quality zapiekanka from a tourist trap. He then told us that the ice cream shop next door is good, to which I showed great excitement. But he tried to divert us from it even though we all wanted to go because he said he didn't put enough time in the parking meter.
We had taken walking tours in Tallinn (public tour) and Riga (5 hour private tour) just before coming to Warsaw and we learned more on those and had far more fun than we did on this tour.
At the end of this tour, no one said anything good about it. We just walked back to the apartment in silence.