Private tour guides
 

Does anyone have recommendations for a private tour guide for Budapest & Prague? There will be 6 of us & we would like to go to Szentendre & maybe another place on the Danube Bend & also general sightseeing in Budapest & Prague.

I can't say enough good things about Jeff Taylor and Pal Street Tours (http://www.palstreettours.com/). We just returned from a trip to Budapest and Prague and I'd have to say Jeff's tour was the highlight of our Budapest visit. Our Prague guide didn't hold a candle to Jeff, so I won't even mention him.

In Budapest, we toured with Andrea Makkay who is suggested in Rick Steves book; we were very pleased with her. In Prague, we highly recommend Dana Chaloupkova (email [email protected]); we can't say enough good things about her and she works very hard to customize to your interests. We feel SHE was a highlight of our trip!

peggionthego - can you give me a bit more information on your Prague guide experience... I will be going there soon and for the nature of this trip I would really like to have a great guide.

What sort of rates does she charge? What did she do that made your experience so positive?
How did you hear about her? does she have a website?

Thanks a million

I heard about her from a friend who had used her twice before. I can't recall what she charged but if you email her she will give you her rates, which of course fluctuate for us with the exchange rate. We did also tip her, in part because we were so pleased. We used her for an "orientation day" to get our bearings; it was very helpful manipulating the public transportation. She made sure when we saw the changing of the guard at Prague Castle that we were ideally positioned. We found it fascinating to discuss life under Communism with her. We wanted to go to Terezin on our own the following day: she made us reservations to tour the Small Fortress (required) and then took us to buy our bus tickets and show us where the bus terminal was...she had lots of brochures and all for us even though she wasn't with us and we didn't pay her for that day. We also used her a second full day; we had kind of an obscure request to go to the Church of St. Cyrius and Methodicus because we have a deep interest in WWII; there is a video about the parachutists not normally shown to regular tourist (usually only to tour groups) but she persuaded the attendant to show it to us, in English no less! I wanted to go to a musical performance and she helped me get tickets for it. I wanted to back up my trip photos to a CD and she found a place for that. I wanted to get a chocolate Easter bunny for my 18 year old son (Easter was the next day) and she took care of that. She liked it that we were so explicit about our interests and she really tailored it to that. Does this help?