"First Love Prague" with Accord Tour
Since I didn’t leave Turpravda for several months before making a choice, I consider it my duty to share my impressions.
We bought a tour from Accordtour - First Love Prague.
Although since March, reading reviews about this tour operator, I was sure that with someone with someone, but not with them. they keep tourists away from the rain, not letting them on the bus, and about the technical condition of the buses, and about hotels with bedbugs and shabby furniture. But it's time to buy a tour, and on the date we need and in the country we need, neither Algol nor Incomarthur (there is not so much negativity about them). Vacation dates for 3 employees can no longer be transferred, and even on the birthday of her husband they guessed. That's how the card lay down, that I had to go with the "Accord-tour". I was terribly worried so as not to ruin my vacation and my husband’s birthday for my own money. But we were very lucky with the escort. When we received the info sheet with the surname of the attendant, of course, I immediately googled it, I didn’t see any negative reviews, but on the contrary, several positive ones, but still 2009, i. e. I realized that a person has been working as a guide for a long time, already inspired some hope, somehow felt better before the trip.
In general, with Taras Khrapko, we did not have any failures on the tour. Everything was clear, coordinated, organized. We managed to get a transfer from the railway station to Terminal A, drove up, and Taras already called us, clarified where we were. Almost all the way to Krakow on the first day, he told the history of the ancient and modern of the places we pass through. Encyclopedic knowledge, very beautiful Ukrainian literary speech, talks tirelessly for hours. We were just amazed at how much you can remember. He is very well versed in the infrastructure of the countries in which he was, he made sanitary stops where there are free toilets, he tells you where it is better to change money, where to eat, in Prague how, what transport to get to. In addition to professional qualities, it is clear that this is a decent intelligent person, one feels that he is responsible for every tourist (there were such extreme moments when this manifested itself, I don’t want to go into the nuances)
To be honest, I was not going to buy optional excursions from them. Even before the trip, I looked at the excursions, the prices are an order of magnitude lower than according to the program of the Accord Tour. Well, for example, Dresden here is 24 euros, at Accord -38, Karlovy Vary - here 23 euros, at Accord -30. And if you take a package of 3 excursions, then even less. And for 3 people, this is up to 100 euros of savings for a family per trip. But Taras so disposed to himself. There was no obtrusiveness, as they wrote in the reviews about the accompanying people, "the main thing is to sell optional excursions. " He handed out leaflets with a list of excursions, who wanted to go on what excursions, put a tick. I didn’t strain or persuade anyone, I just told in detail about each one. On the first day, we didn’t sign up anywhere, we planned it ourselves, but then we thought, we thought: our guide suits us, the bus suits us, the company on the bus too. It is not known how it will be in another place and they took as many as 4 electives: Dresden, Karlovy Vary, Cesky Krumlov, Saxon Switzerland. So the profit that the company has earned from us is the merit of only the escort.
Now about hotels. There were no bedbugs for sure.
First night in the Krakow region (15 km outside the city). Hotel Ferro Express 3* , great hotel , according to our measure, it also pulls 4 *. It can be seen that it was recently built, most likely for Euro 2012 in Poland.
We had a two-room suite for 3 people, with two bathrooms, a double bed in one room, and 2 single beds in the other. Plasma TV . Breakfast buffet, more or less normal.
4 days in Prague we lived in Hotel Juno 3* here, of course, an order of magnitude lower than the conditions, a 14-storey building, probably Soviet buildings period, minimum comfort, the TV-box is small, but it worked, and was immediately set to a Russian-language program, clean, the furniture is new, towels were changed every day and for some reason the beds were remade for us. The main thing here is that it is located near the center, on the metro go 15 minutes (metro station Strashnitskaya) in a residential area (where food prices in stores are much lower than in the center, where tourists are swarming). There are two large BILLA stores, open until 21-00 and a Tesko hypermarket, this one is generally until 24-00 (no need to waste precious time during the day). The prices pleasantly surprised me with discounts on clothes.
But, just in this hotel, there was a negative, the only one for the whole trip was food. For me personally spoiled the impression. Buffet of low quality cheap food. Large assortment of beautifully laid out synthetic fast food food. . Here instead of butter - spread. Sausages of the same composition. Soup type - frozen vegetables filled with boiling water, not even boiled, also peppered. Tea, coffee, too, some kind of burda from a vat. When on the 3rd day I already started to twist, I decided not to eat anything, just drink milk, there was coffee in jugs. Yeah, so it turned out that the powder dissolved in water did not even bother to boil. It would suit me more, as in some reviews they criticized “like in a soviet canteen” - porridge is unpretentious, but natural, with a natural piece of butter and meat and without frills. But 80% of tourists would probably disagree with such a statement. Moreover, Germans, Poles, Chinese, and Russians ate in the same room with us. This was not the case, as it was written in some reviews, “the Germans ate in another hall, they served completely different food for them, but we were not allowed to go there. ” Ukrainians were not forced to leave their bags at the entrance so that, God forbid, they would not put a sandwich in, as they wrote about hotels in Budapest. The sign at the entrance was “do not take out of the hall”, but no one followed this. So we did not feel like representatives of a third world country.
On the way back, last night we stayed at Hotel Azalia 3*, also in the vicinity of Krakow, the same new, classy hotel, with good quality food.
In general, I think that the trip did not disappoint us, we received a lot of impressions, the guides were interesting, I was especially impressed by the Herald in Dresden, a passionate person, it is clear that he enjoys his work, and not just earns money. He expresses his attitude to the past and present of Germany, and this is interesting to hear, not from politicians, but from ordinary citizens. I was surprised how much he knows about Ukraine, not only about cities, but also about historical and cultural monuments in them.
cafe in Č eský Krumlov
Chesky Krumlov
Karlovy Vary pump rooms
Saxon Switzerland
Karlovy Vary
