Prague tour guide?
 

DH and I will be in Prague for 3 days toward the end of September. We would like to hire a private tour guide for at least a day. Recommendations? Who have you had a great experience with?

Thanks.

You might want to look into our guide Stepanka Holess on the web at www.prague-my-love.com

She was prepared with an extensive orientation itinerary for the day. Her secret is that you do not actually see everything (go into and fully tour each site as it were). But, rather she moves you from place to place, giving you inside knowledge (best times), history, lots of pointers and prepares for days on your own. This was perfect, in that we quickly gained comfort with the entire city.

More to read about Prague on my trio report - do a search against "Dark Beer" to find it

I have a travel file from my trips to Prague; if you'd like to see it, email me at ESL1051 at yahoo dot com

Sabina, email [email protected] Fodor’s forum: “We (a On my first trip to Prague we used the services of Dana Chaloupka as a tour guide. She is extremely nice, helpful and knowledgeable, and speaks excellent English. She has a website http://sweb.cz/travelcz architectural sights. We can recommend her highly.

On my second trip we had two guided small-group tours provided by General Tours, and our knowledgeable and English-fluent guide, Jana Lukesova, freelances as well. Her email address is [email protected] She took my friend on a private 3-hour general orientation tour of Prague’s highlights (I skipped that one, but my TC said it was excellent) and the following day we went with her on a private tour of Mala Strana.

Another often-recommended guide here at fodors is Sarka Pelantova. Information about Sarka can be found at http://www.guide-prague.cz/guide/spa/pelantova-sarka

One that I cannot recommend is Jay Pesta: Prague Tours, an agency highly rated on Trip Advisor. Jay did not show for a scheduled tour and initially claimed there was no record of our reservation. A short time later, someone from Prague Tours called back to say a mistake had been made and to offer us a discounted tour the next day. We declined the offer.

Jay later explained that our reservation was lost because: "My computer broke down..." It seems incredible that a tour business would have no backups or paper schedule. In a subsequent e-mail received after we returned home, he offered to "pay for alternative tours" that we may have taken that day in lieu of his tour, and offered to give us a free private tour on a subsequent visit though it is unlikely we will return to Prague anytime soon. While we appreciate Jay's attempt to remedy the situation after the fact, we still cannot understand how a business can be so susceptible to a "computer failure." Things "do happen" but any quality business has procedures in place to ensure that these kinds of problems don't occur.

Jay Pesta (his full name Jaroslav Pesta) is not highly regarded on Trip Advisor, in fact hardly ever mentioned.
He's a one man band really.

wobbers-
Jay Pesta is listed as #3 on things to do in Prague: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractio...e_Bohemia.html

Winnie, I know his listing on TA - and ask yourself how suddenly in 4 months he became a number 6 attraction! Things can sometimes get 'fixed' few posts by one time posters just in the last few months. I no longer trust TA reviews, too many commercial interests nowadays.
When I said he is hardly ever mentioned, I should have said he is hardly ever mentioned by anyone who contributes to Prague/Czech Republic forums.

We went through Sarka (www.prague-guide.info/) and had her father, Milan, and really enjoyed him. We used him for a visit to the Jewish Quarter and then a day to Terezin.

Thank you all. I'm not ignoring your input. I am monitoring the thread, but haven't had a chance to look into the various options. I'll need to soon, as our trip is in Sept.

Hard to give you an advice about the tour guides 'cause it's my profession. Anyway Sarka is a good guide but she is often busy. Honestly I don't know the others working for her.

@wobbers: can you tell me how to become #3 at TripAdvisor? Thx. a lot.

We used a guide when we got to Prague and hired her for 1 day through Sarka, email is below.
[email protected] Our guide was Barbora Laskova. We were very pleased with Barbora. She was attentive to what we wanted to see, funny, knowledgeable and showed us how to get around in Prague. It was well worth it. Hope you enjoy your trip. It is one of the most beautiful places in Eastern Europe.

Hi all. We are just back from a truly beautiful trip.

I wanted to report back that we ended up using a tour guide recommended and arranged for by the concierge at our hotel, U Zlate Studne. The guide's name is Jitka Sukova, PhD., and I do recommend her. She can be reached at [email protected].

Jitka is a Czech woman in her 60's, extremely well versed in the history, culture, politics and architecture of the city and her native country. We spent about 5 hours with Jitka, touring, at our request, Prague castle and it's Jewish quarter. Though Jitka's presentation may be described as "dry," it was extremely thorough and we appreciated her detail and dedication.

Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

I wouldn't go with Pesta. We booked with him and he "sold us" at the last minute, claiming he was sick, to another tour guide that ripped us off.