From Brussels: Bruges Guided Tour or At Your Pace Experience

If you are looking for the best places to buy your chocolate while in Bruges consider this tour and Oscar as your tour guide. He was patience, professional and very present throughout the entire tour. His information was valuable and thorough with a hint of humor periodically to keep things interesting.

Beautiful sights, very informative. Jaris was a great guide and offered mamy helpful suggestions for Bruges and Brussels

I'm currently on the bus of this tour, we booked the English speaking tour but due to low numbers we have been thrown on the Spanish bus!! What a bloody racket!! Non stop Spanish it's like listening to a jack hammer all trip. Add to that the first stop of our tour has been cancelled so we have to tag along on the Spanish tour that has a different itinerary, we have to sit on the bus like little puppy dogs whilst the Spanish do their tour & wait for their return. Can't wait too see whats in store for us for the next 8.5 hrs.😫 We were given no notification of the itinerary changes prior to arrival!! We received at least 8 notifications from Viator about this trip yet NOT 1 MENTIONED ITINERARY CHANGES!!If we had known earlier we would have cancelled 24 hrs earlier as per policy, but because the tour operator didn't we just have to like it or lump it!!!

Our guide, Jaris, was fantastic. So knowledgeable and enthusiastic and very helpful. We would highly rate a tour with him. He worked so hard to give us a great day My only reason for not leaving a 5 star review is due to the tour company changing our tour the day before and removing Leuven from the itinerary. This was disappointing at the last minute But well worth going to Bruges and Damme.

The process for getting on the bus could definitely be improved. There were multiple tours leaving from the same location (such as the Bruges day tour and the Bruges/Ghent tour), but there were no signs indicating which guide or location corresponded to each tour. We initially approached the wrong guide, and unfortunately, he was somewhat rude and not particularly helpful in directing us to the correct spot. Additionally, we specifically booked an English-language tour, but our group was combined with the Spanish-language tour. The bus was roughly 90% Spanish-speaking and 10% English-speaking. On the way to Bruges, most of the information was given in Spanish, with some portions translated into English. However, it didn't seem like the English-speaking passengers received all of the same information. When the guide did translate into English, it was also difficult to hear because many of the Spanish-speaking passengers had already received the info and were talking amongst themselves while it was being translated. I think the company should be much more transparent about this when people book. If a tour is going to be conducted in both languages , that should be clearly stated upfront so customers know what to expect. Having customers select a language when booking gives the impression that the tour will be conducted primarily in that language, which wasn't our experience. If you book a walking tour at the location - that’s when the groups will be split into English and Spanish. Bruges itself was lovely to visit and explore, and the driver got us there and back safely. I’m sharing this review mainly so that future travelers know what to expect when booking.

I booked this trip and paid for it well in advance. I booked a hotel in Brussels that was near the pickup spot. I highly anticipated the tour. The day before the tour, I was checking to verify where it would start when I discovered that my booking had been canceled. Not by me. I checked and my payment had been refunded a couple days earlier. But there was no notice or email or text to me by either the tour operator or TripAdvisor to let me know I was canceled. If there had been, I could have tried to rebook it. I tried contacting the tour operator but never received a reply. I thought maybe the tour was canceled due to weather so, just to check, I tried rebooking it. By then, there was not enough space for the 2 of us but there was enough space for 1. So I knew the tour itself had not been canceled. I was very upset as this was the one time in my life that I would be there and it was the only day I had scheduled to go to Bruges. I have never had this issue with any other tours I have scheduled through TripAdvisor so I don't know what happened or why I got canceled. I gave this 1 circle because I couldn't give it 0. I'm writing this review because it appears to be the only way I can let both TripAdvisor and the tour operator know of my disappointment.

Good timing with the bus. Our itinerary was changed when we got there. Missed out on a couple things, but had a great time.

This is by far the worst experience I have ever had while booking tours with TripAdvisor. The tour description clearly says that this includes a guided tour & that it is in both English & Spanish. But English speakers barely got anything. On the way, the guide gave us some info about Brugge & Damme in both languages, but the Spanish parts was 2-3x longer than the English parts. Then the first stop was in Damme. The guide told us a little bit about it just before we were dropped off. We were told to roam around & have breakfast but the guide didn’t give us any info, not even to the Spanish speakers. There were only a couple of expensive place to eat there & the only thing to do there was to take a canal boat to Brugge, which wasn’t part of the tour. There was a nice windmill just near the town, but we couldn’t get close enough to get the kind of photos we wanted. And then the guide told us on the way back to Brugge to have a look outside the windows at the windmills, so that counts as the windmills part of the tour as well. Almost a complete waste of time, although it was a pretty day. Then we finally arrived at Brugge. Just before the bus stopped, the guide told us that English speakers will not get a guided tour & only get a QR code to scan which contains a list of places to visit (which was a cheap AI generated website by the way). But the Spanish speakers were getting a proper guided tour with radios, in fact there were two guides for them. We asked him why the English speakers were not getting a guided tour, and the guide said that we didn’t pay for it, even though the price for both English & Spanish on TripAdvisor is the same. In fact many of us also paid for extras with the tour. We showed this to him, and he just smiled & said we didn’t pay for it, and he can’t help us. Then another lady asked him the same thing, and he started getting very rude & abusive, and then he told us to p*ss off & f*ck off. I asked him to give me his name so that I can file a complaint, and he said he won’t tell us. Some other guests said his name was Oscar, but I only have a picture of him. If you see him, I’m sorry but your day is ruined. This is completely unacceptable behaviour from this guide & this company. I’ve come to expect much better from TripAdvisor. This company should not be allowed to offer English tours when they’re treating English speakers as second-class guests. I had originally originally booked the tour for Sunday since there are Sunday markets in Brugge which I wanted to see, but I had rescheduled the tour at the company’s required & this is how I (& at least 10 other English speaking guests) was treated. I had to reschedule 3 other tours as well. This company should be ashamed and I’ll ask for a full refund.

Did not see windmills only through bus windows. No guided tour if you're English speaker. Guided tour was only provides to Spanish speakers on the tour. Told to piss off by guide Oscar when I raised concerns. The cost was the same was for both groups, and the description of the tour promised a guided portion.

Do not book this tour with this company. They first requested that I change from English to Spanish tour with less than 24 hours for the tour to start, then they cancelled the tour and then when I rebooked the tour in Spanish they just drove us in the bus to the destination and told us that an email will be send from the office with a self guided tour. The email never came and the tour guide (Peter) was nice enough to send us a copy. Total disaster and not a single word to apologize.