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• Unsatisfying private day trip to Berat

  Tess C,

  8 thg 11, 2024

  - Đánh giá từ Viator

  3.00

  We booked a private tour to Berat from Durrës. The tour company was Albanian Travel and Tours. Our guide was Henri, who stepped in when the original guide couldn’t do it. We settled on the itinerary, including subbing in a trip to the Roman ruins in Apollonia. We had a good morning. We made conversation on the ride to Berat. Once there he provided general information about the castle. We would have preferred to get more cultural context about the Castle, such as what life was like there, economic background, anything other than just the basic facts that we could get on Wikipedia. Lunch was quite good, but Henri barely spoke to us. Again, no context for what we were eating other than the names of each item. We tried to coax some conversation and he did engage when talking about his childhood. We got to Apollonia at 3:30; the museum closed at 4:00. We feel it was his responsibility to help us stay on a schedule that would have allowed for time to see the site and a bit of the museum. On site he provided brief info about the Roman era, although a bit of it was incorrect. No context for the monastery. The drive back to Durrës was mostly silent. Again, we tried to coax some conversation, to no avail. We’ve done a lot of tours in the last 5 months and in all of them the guides have given us in depth facts about the sites and additional context, such as cultural info or funny stories. They never lacked for topics to talk about. Our experience with Henri was the opposite. For example, we asked some questions about the communist dictatorship and got brief responses. We’re from the US and thus don’t have much understanding of the political history of Albania; we were hoping to learn more about modern history but Henri didn’t offer much. What he did share, which saddened us, was his generally negative opinions about Albania and Albanians. Lastly, he was periodically on his phone while driving (a couple times to figure out the route), which felt unsafe. In short, the tour was pretty uncomfortable and definitely not what we expected and definitely not worth what we paid. For what we paid we hoped to come away having learned a lot, having a fun experience and having a positive outlook on Albania. We learned some but the majority of the time it felt unsatisfying and uncomfortable. We should not have to coax info or conversation from a guide. We don’t know what other guides from this agency are like, but based on our experience we would not use the agency again. We’ll also think twice before booking through Viator again.