Shore Excursion: Alexandria City Tour från Alexandria Port

This is the worst tour that we booked through you. We were very disappointed about this tour. The guide’s English was very hard to understand, may be 10%. The car had no ac. The tour hours were cut short, only about >3 hrs for 6 hrs tour.

If can get past the uncertainty as to where to meet the guide (outside the port gate - about 1000 steps) one will have an excellent experience with a great guide. The tour included two more stops than what was advertised - a nice bonus.. Lunch was at a place frequented by locals with authentic food, yet safe for tourists. I reviewed this as five star because I did not want to diminish the credit given to the great guide, but were I to rate response to my multiple inquiries, it would be one star.

Our guide Samira was wonderful and gave us a great tour of some of the most interesting sites in Alexandria. Very knowledgeable and never rushed, a real pleasure.

We had a lovely day in Alexandria touring the catacombs, the amphitheater, the library and the fort.

The excursion was very interesting. Isaac was a very knowledgeable guide and the driver did a good job driving in very busy traffic. The citadel of Qaitbey, the Catacombs and the Roman amphitheatre all involved a number of steps and uneven ground. Good shoes are needed.

We had a wonderful guide, named Reem. She was knowledgeable and full of energy. She made our tour exceptional. Everything went smoothly as we went from the Citadel, to the Catacombs, to amphitheatre and finally, to the library. We found this tour be excellent value and we highly recommend!

The driver and the guide were nice enough, though english dialect of guide was sometimes difficult to understand The car was reasonably new and air-conditioned Waters were purchased for us As this was private tour , itinerary was flexible Though some education was provided to us enroute to a site, most conversation while driving was between guide and driver in Arabic We were left to explore two of the sites without our private guide..... this led to the trip's biggest problem as after the library tour was completed , we could not find our private guide for forty mins. Unlike most private trip advisor and viator tours , we WERE NOT GIVEN LOCAL GUIDE /DRIVER CONTACT INFO ahead of time ..... thus when we did have the problem above , we were out of luck We reached out thru the "contact vendor " tab on line and also found another company vehicle at the library , who with great effort , we were able to explain our predicament At this point , we chose to terminate the tour half way thru and returned to the ship safely I suspect there likely may be other options available Never heard from operator after the fact either

Had a great experience with our guide and driver. Learned a lot about the sites we saw and asked many questions to understand more about life in Alexandria. Tried Egyptian tea and coffee at a famous cafe. We enjoyed the fact that our guide would tell us about the site and then give us time to wander on our own.

From start to finish my guide Karhim showed the highlights of Alexandria. Promo pick up. The driver and AC car much appreciated. Thank you.

Overall, this was a pretty bad tour that was poorly planned and executed. We started off with our guide not appearing for almost 20-25 minutes and then he waited with us an additional 15 minutes for our driver. Already around 40 minutes into the start time, we finally got on the road. We got to the Catacombs 15 minutes before they opened and had to wait until they opened. As we waited, the catacombs went from quiet to becoming a frenzy. About 6 cruise ship busses and multiple private tour busses all appeared within the 15 minutes of opening. We saw that it was becoming a hectic zoo so we asked our tour guide multiple times if we could leave and come back a little later after they all left. He repeatedly said no and that he had a plan to avoid them all (he didn’t). The catacombs were mobbed throughout and quickly became hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, and way too crowded, making the entire experience upsetting, especially since our guide didn’t listen to us. We left not being in the best mood, but kept everything polite and respectful. I think the experience made our guide upset too as he became sassy and not in a good mood either. Throughout the next couple stops, our guide struggled with basic information giving multiple dates for events and nothing seemed accurate. Eventually there was confusion with the excursion itinerary and he had to call the tour company to clarify things and we had to provide screenshots of the sights that were written in the description, which resulted in one less stop. Once we got to the Alexandria library, our guide said he was forbidden from accompanying us inside and abandoned us (despite us seeing other non-library guides with their groups inside). Later we actually saw him inside within the library, where he seemed shocked he ran into us, and eventually he accompanied us. Again he tried explaining things incorrectly, and clearly didn’t know his way around the library as we got lost a couple times. We had to beg to go to the Qaitbay Citadel, which is one of the main sights of Alexandria, and eventually he allowed us to. Within the Citadel, he again didn’t know his way around and I found the best viewpoint on the top of the exterior walls and he repeatedly said “I can’t believe you found this spot!” and “I never knew about this.” Throughout the citadel he again didn’t know much information, but he kept trying to act like he did, despite us not even wanting to hear much more since it was taking up so much time. He then asked us when we wanted to do lunch as we had paid the extra $10USD per person for the optional lunch. We said whatever he recommended since he knew the area and itinerary better. After the main mosque, he took us to a Fish Market restaurant where they informed us it would be a 30-45 minute wait for lunch (again clearly the tour was poorly planned) so he said he had another option for lunch. He and our driver took us to a dumpy fast food spot on the side of the El Gaish Road named “كثريالهرم” which at the time of this review had a 2.2/5 on Google. The fast food establishment was pretty disgusting and only served us $1USD worth of Egyptian koshary (noodles, rice, and tomato sauce). We hardly ate any of it as it was so bad, and after our guide devoured his bowl, smoked his cigarettes right next to us with the restaurant staff and with our driver, our guide looked over and said “wow that’s upsetting you didn’t like it” since we hadn’t eaten much. We paid an extra $20 to get two $1 bowls of tomato noodles and rice… The only nice thing about the tour was our guide kept offering to take pictures of us (which itself became a little too uncomfortable because he wanted multiple photos of us on his own phone at every single stop). Overall this was a very poor tour and we would not recommend it to anyone else (especially with the additional lunch option which was a total gross rip off).