joPda

We booked our day trip to the Pyramids, Sakkara about a month beforehand. However, we never got a confirmation about a pick-up time from. We were easy going about it as we got a confirmation about our payment right away. So we called them about our trip 12 hours before the trip took place and we got a confirmation of everything within an hour. We could not have done the trip the way they arranged for us on our own. Everything was as promised. We got a bottle of water each in the car and another bottle each at lunch. The site fee of the Pyramids, Sakkara and the last temple (I forgot the name) were included. You also got lunch. However, we did pay extra for a camel ride of 20 USD per person for 20 minutes and a fee to look into one of the Pyramids. During your trip, your tour guide commented that he also does this privately. So we arranged another trip with him the following day to five sites within the city and if there was time he could suggest anything as it was also a day trip. Turned out he took us to three sites exactly as in the Memphis package of half day trip. He then filled the rest of the day by taking us to the shopping factories tours. It was not as discussed the day before. We did not get to see the other two must see sites recommended by the National Geographic book we showed him the day before. There were no bottle of water anywhere. That was already disappointing. On top of that he charged us almost double of what the exact same trip arranged by the Memphis Tours would have cost and through Memphis Tours we would have saved not just money but also time as it would have been just a half day trip and we would not have been under the pressure of buying stuff from all the factories trip he took us to. At every factories he would give his opinion of what was truly traditional, truly Egypt and what you should take home with us. He also went on to suggest how much we should tip the driver and it somehow gave us an idea of how much he expected from us. He was good at this considering after 15 years in business as he told us. In all, we could not have been any happier with the day trip we booked with the Memphis Tours. They were very professional...something you do not see often there.