We will be going to Budapest, Prague & Vienna this summer and wanted to know if anyone has booked private tours and if so through who? Thanks

When we visited Vienna a few years ago, we stayed at the Hilton and had concierge arrange a private car to take us to Budapest. It was the most wonderful experience and well-worth the expense. P.S. It's not cheap. However, with that said, you can stop when you want, see what you want and have someone with you that speaks the language! Most hotels have reputable services. Enjoy.

I recently returned from Vienna and Prague and we used guides in each city.Click on my name and the threads on my Prague and on Vienna visits should come up, there are specific complaints as well as praise

Elaine

You recently sent me your extensive files on Prague & Vienna. I have not as yet completely gone through them. I did not notice anything about private tour guides or tours that you may have taken. Any further insights? Thanks again.

HI
I updated my files after my trip, I don't know if you got the before or after version

anyway, click on these links, there's tour guide info as I mentioned

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34484444

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34483824

Hi,

I am a travel agent and I am a Virtuoso agent, working with a Virtuoso travel agency. All Virtuoso agents, who specialize in Europe, like I do, have a network of personal contacts in all of those areas. Our personal contacts can arrange private cars with drivers for our clients and customers. You can be certain that you are getting the best value and a reliable company with these contacts. I would check with a Virtuoso travel agent or travel agency.

Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.

Best Regards,
Julia

Please feel free to e-mail me

Joey, good luck with your travel research on Budapest, Prague, and Vienna. I have some questions for you about Tuscany! I notice on another posting you mentioned that you hired a driver named Luca for 3 days in Tuscany. You mentioned you had a great time. I see his e-mail is info@hillsand roads.com? The web-site (hillsandroads.com) only has a little info. Can you please tell me how you found Luca and where did you visit in Tuscany? Does he have a van big enough for a family of 5 plus luggage? Is he a good driver? Would you hire him again and recommend him? Thanks for any advice. I need to hire a good driver for my family of 5 for our first trip to Italy! I'm a little nervous about entrusting my family to a stranger. Thanks!

Melissa

We found Luca through the hotel that we were staying at in Tuscany. To answer your question directly, friends of ours are using him next week and they make the fifth family that we (or those that used him that we referred) have recommended. My daughter is going back to Tuscany on her Honeymoon in October and will be using him again. If anything, Luca drives too slow for my Type A personality. He is very careful and extremely personable. After spending 3.5 days with him it was like leaving a friend behind. He has 2 vans, one can comfortably fit your family and the other is much larger. Luca picked us up in Florence, and took us to Luca, Pisa, Sienna, San G., Multepulciano, Multicino, Chianti and a whole bunch of places in between (please pardon the spelling as I'm too lazy to look up the proper names). We stopped off for 3 wine tastings which were excellent. Beautiful areas even if you don't drink. Some of them have optional lunches which I'm sure the kids would enjoy. Luca din't know his way around the Pisa area but once we were near Tuscany we hit his home turf. He lives just outside Sienna and I think the whole town said hello to him as we were walking througfh Sienna.
Needless to say we highly recvommend him and he is extremely flexible concerning hours and he's not expensive by U.S. standards. I'm actually jealous since we had such a great time in Tuscany last year. I hope I can say the same about eastern europe. My hope in posting on this site was to come up with 3 more Luca's for this trip.
Enjoy the trip. If you use him tell him that Joe from NY referred you.

Joeyrm7, Thanks a bunch for your info on Luca in Tuscany! I hope you find the private tour guides you are looking for in Budapest, Prague, and Vienna. Have you tried also posting a message on [email protected]? You can sign up to have this newsletter sent to your e-mail, and it has a great community section you can log into and post questions for whatever region you wish. Both fodors and frommers have experienced travellers sharing info! Good luck!

An excellent private tour guide in Prague - just try http://www.sweb.cz/travelcz

Hi Joeyrm7,

I hope you find a guide for your new adventure! I am actually trying to find one for Tuscany right now. Would you mind emailing me privately so I could ask you some more specific questions re HillsandRoads.com and Luca?
I would really appreciate it!
Happy planning!
DebiC

For Prague try contacting Sarka Pelantova ([email protected]), unfortunately she was unwell when I was there in Feb, but organised another guide - Marketa for me. I could not recommend them more highly, they speak excellent english and you will find they know all these lovely little bits of folklore you will never find in a book. Let me know if you need more info, and have a great trip.

although my info is included in the threads that I referenced above, my guide in Prague was Dana Chaloupka
and her website is
http://sweb.cz/travelcz

Dear Traveler:

For anyone considering a trip to Prague or elsewhere in the Czech Republic, I would like to recommend a personal tour guide. Her name is Dana (pronounced “Donna”) Chaloupkova, who is a life-long resident of Prague. Dana is a trained and certified tour guide who speaks English and is extremely personable. She specializes in custom tours tailored to one’s preferences. If a visitor is only interested in seeing Prague, that’s fine, but if one’s goal is to visit other cities such as Brno or Pilsen, Dana will accompany you to your desired destinations, taking care of hotel arrangements and providing a car and driver if needed. If a visitor is interested in tracing the family tree, which might involve visiting small villages in rural areas of the country, Dana will help plan a trip and accommodations to satisfy this objective as well.

On a recent visit to the country I consider myself fortunate to have had Dana as a tour guide. Her services are reasonably priced and her insights set her apart from the larger “tour bus” variety of tours.

If having a personal tour guide sounds appealing (especially for visitors who don’t speak Czech), then I recommend Dana’s services. If anyone might be interested in planning a custom tour of Prague or anywhere else in the Czech Republic, feel free to contact Dana at [email protected] .

George and Sylvia Vild

Hi, I was in Prague last year and was more than satisfied with the private tour guide Jay Pesta ([email protected]) He is recommended by the editor of Fodor´s, and theres no doubt why. His tours were so much fun, we learned about every little curiosity around the city. There are no strict guidelines for becoming a guide in Prague, so the result is a lot of people with almost no experience touring groups around the city. But Jay and all his guides are fully certified, which means the info we got along the way was precise, and so interesting! He speaks English very well, and was on time, reliable, yet flexible, and fun. We also went with him on some short trips outside of Prague, and he arranged everything for us. It was great. I can also recommend the hotel we stayed at- Rezidence Retezova. Its in the Old Town, right around the corner from the Charles bridge, but on a quiet side street. Good luck with your planning, and Im sure youll love Prague!!

I echo the endorsement of Dana; we spent two days with her in Prague. Because of my husband's WWII obsession, we wanted to tour the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Syril and Methodius, a church which was the scene of violent fighting between the Nazis and the resistance fighters who assassinated Heydrich. This is a fairly obscure "tourist" destination, but Dana researched it all in advance and arranged a showing of a film which we would have never been able to view there on our own. She also found me a shop to get my photos on my camera's memory stick saved to a CD (I was nervous about so much stored on that one camera). She was very responsive and professional.

Just wanted to comment that I also visited the church of Sts Cyril and Methodius (on my own) and was fascinated with the history. Slightly off the beaten tourist track,but well worth the visit, I thought.

I just returned from my first European trip which included three nights in Prague. Three days was enough for us in the oldest parts of Prague, Old town, New town, Prague Castle side of the river. It would have been nice to have a couple more days for trips outside of the city.

If you can afford it and have time I highly recommend a private guide. After meeting our guide, it was evident he could provide information for ANY level and range of interest. Here is feedback I just sent into Fodor's:

After seeing the recommendation in your Prague travel guide for Prague-Private-Guide.com (Prague-Walks.com) I booked a 6-hour customized tour for my husband and me through their online request form. I received a very timely reply from owner Jaroslav “Jay” Pesta. Jay answered ALL my questions - I had several - and he included entrance fee information for the places he recommended we might like to visit.

Jay was personable, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about Prague and the Czech Republic and obviously passionate about providing tours that were customized to the interest of the client. Jay met us right on time in the reception area of the hotel. He went above and beyond to assist me by making contact with the Vital Records department to find out what I needed to search for information on my grandfather who was born in Prague and he followed up with me the next day.

After our tour was concluded, my husband and I both had wished we’d booked more time with Jay. We feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet Jay and have him as our Prague private guide. Jay gets our highest recommendation.

Best of luck in your travels.

CORRECTION! I entered the website address incorrectly -- it is:

Private-Prague-Guide.com

Please see the posting from Fodor editor Doug Stallings "Just back from Prague". He highly recommends Jay.

Here is the link: http://www.fodors.com/news/story_1152.html

Thanks for all the good info! pp