May 8, 2024
Excellent. Very professional and friendly guides - Excellent tour and guides. Both Isabel inside the Monastery and the Valley of the Fallen guide gave very good explanations. To recommend!!!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Oct 17, 2022
Excellent day trip - Well organized, and perfect timings for visiting El Escorial, Valle de Los Caidos and Segovia. The guide was knowledgeable and friendly, the tours has tickets included and the time you get in each place is perfect. Also the lunch break in Madrid makes sense as some people want to mix the tours.
Review provided by Viator
Feb 21, 2024
Royal Crypt and Aqueduct delivers! - Exceptional stops! Too bad the whispers were lousy quality, and, our guides' English was fair. Segovia needs to get public rest rooms.
Review provided by Viator
Oct 12, 2022
Mixed experience - As with other reviews, these were two separate half day tours with a return to Madrid for lunch after Escorial. Both were bilingual which was a challenge especially in the Segovia tour. In Segovia we may have been the only English speaking clients so it was done primarily in Spanish. The Escorial part went well.
Review provided by Viator
Oct 14, 2023
Very disappointed with the number of people, wasted time going back and forth to Madrid and poor tour guides - We were disappointed in the number of people on this tour. When we went to board the bus, we were ask to board a bus on which there were no seats for more than 15 people. We then boarded a separate bus that was very comfortable. This issue indicated the people in charge of the tour did not have a handle on the size of the group. When we arrived at El Escorial, the group had to find an additional tour guide for our language. This tour guide walked us through the site but was not really 'engaged" with the group and did not leave much time for questions. Once El Escorial and basilica were visited, we were surprised to hear for the first time that we were returning to Madrid instead of heading directly to Segovia. Thus we spent more than on hour more on the bus and once we got to Segovia our free time to shop the site was greatly reduced and again the tour guide for our langanuge was not easy to understand.
While we really recommend the locations for visiting, we recommend booking a tour which has a smaller number of people and one that does not return to Madrid before proceeding to the later afternoon sights.
Review provided by Viator
Jul 10, 2023
Not actually a full-day tour - Be aware that this is not actually a day trip. After the morning at Escorial and the Valley, they drove us back to Madrid and told us to return to the tour office after lunch for a Segovia tour. We wasted hours backtracking when the first two locations were on the way to the third, and we could have relaxed and eaten there. Morning tour guide struggled with English and afternoon tour guide would walk away from the group, narrating sites when parts of the tour group were completely out of site. All locations are amazing! Unfortunately, this tour company was not.
Review provided by Viator
May 25, 2023
The tour was splitted in... - The tour was splitted in two halves.
In the morning Escorial and valley of Cuelgamuros.
We went back to Madrid and took local lunch.
After that in the afternoon to Sevilla.
At the end we had a bus ride of 4 hours in a day and missed the oven roasted piglet.
Review provided by Viator
Apr 9, 2023
Bus trip to Segovia, El escorial y Valle de los Caidos - The visits were good, although we would have preferred more time in Segovia but the bus we used the whole day was old and the A/C was not working, please VPT tours you know better, imagine this trip in summer, time to modernize your fleet!
Review provided by Viator
Aug 11, 2024
Fatal! - NO USE! CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE MAIN OFFICE, TERRIBLE. NO COMMUNICATION, NO INSTRUCTIONS. THEY THROW YOU IN SEGOVIA WITH A DRIVER WHO KNOWS NOTHING. DO NOT GUIDE UNTIL YOU ARRIVE IN SEGOVIA, AND NO ORGANIZATION WHEN YOU ARRIVE ON THE BUS. PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS AGENCY.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
May 19, 2024
Rude and not suitable for older people - If someone wants a really bad experience, hire VPT.
First of all, the subway that morning was delayed and forty minutes in advance we called to alert us of the situation. The two telephone operators were rude and said that when the rest were ready they would leave. They couldn't wait 5 minutes. Logically we left the subway and took a taxi. Arriving on time for the activity.
The first guide, Mary, if I remember correctly, explained everything very well and told us that there were many stairs and anyone who didn't feel up to it would have to wait. Logically, since I was traveling with my mother (a very active lady but 70 years old) I asked her how difficult it was. He told me yes, that it was difficult and that he recommended not going. Clearly it did not say that when I bought the activity and he rudely responded that I should assume so since the tombs are always in basements, for which I gave him several examples of tombs in Spanish Catholic temples where they can be seen on the ground floor without having to descend stairs.
The excursion continued, the church was closed and we went to the library, he told us not to go so as not to delay the group, which I told him we would not do: But why had we paid for the excursion!! He answered me rudely and of course, I remembered a comment I saw in the purchasing application where they mentioned a rude guide. He got angry and started yelling at me (taking advantage of the fact that only us and an older couple spoke Spanish) and he only calmed down when I started to tell him what I thought about his mistreatment of older people in English. The excursion continued without too many inconveniences, it was only unpleasant that he did so much Francoist politics, defenestrating democratic governments (something that, although it was uncomfortable, does not bother me because it is not my country and vacations are for resting from these types of issues).
He hurried us back saying that the church was closed, which we couldn't verify. He also didn't let us go through the souvenir shops saying that there would be time later, but it never happened. As a result, the activity ended 40 minutes early (she was organizing activities with her family upon her return and was talking to someone asking them to have her backpack ready for when she returned, which explains her rush).
We returned to Madrid, which shows that we actually bought two half-day excursions and not one of 11 hours, they return you to Madrid making you lose an hour (because you pass through the escorial on the way to Segovia) not to mention that you are in Madrid obliged to have lunch there and not walking in the city of Segovia.
At the indicated time they looked for us to go to Segovia. The guide left the agency very quickly, leaving us and an older Chilean couple behind. I yelled at him to wait, and he said they would, that no one would be left behind. Once again Vanesa was a good guide, she just didn't count the people and she started the walking tour with 4 less Americans (luckily one of them noticed that his family was missing), when they arrived she started the tour again and only noticed that the Chilean couple was missing when The woman rebuked her inside the Cathedral (that is, more than 15 minutes of walking later and 40 of the excursion). That is, she didn't know how many people she was carrying and she had to run to catch up with her because she was literally alone.
I told him several times that we had the Alcazar (that's what they sold us) but instead we entered the cathedral. There was no refund for the change.
It really was mistreatment of tourists and, in particular, the elderly. If you want an activity where the only thing that matters is that you pay and that you have a bad time, I recommend this agency, otherwise... Choose any other!
Review provided by Tripadvisor