Overall, very pleased, with some challenges and hiccups along the way. We gave Zicasso’s travel specialist the general parameters of our trip request and received a very detailed itinerary suggestion, which we adjusted as needed. Our travel specialist was also able to offer very helpful recommendations and suggestions. We had many requested places to visit in a short amount of time. Our travel company put together an itinerary that made sense and that worked for us.
Excellent Tour Guides: Our guides in Tokyo and Hakone, in Osaka, on the Osaka night tour, and in Hiroshima were excellent! They were kind, respectful, and knowledgeable, and did a really good job making sure we were all accounted for, asking if we were doing OK and if we needed bathroom stops. It was impressive that they were able to move us along on our tour to see all that was promised, while not making us feel rushed.
Tour Guide, Not Good: Our guide in Kyoto kind of abandoned one group of us when he had the taxi drop us off at a spot near the second temple stop. He followed with the rest of our group in a different taxi, but he didn’t look for our group and headed straight up to the temple without us. After much confusion and walking while trying to find him, my sister and I decided not to make the walk to the temple because of difficulty walking. He said: you have the itinerary and knew which temple we were going to. Really?! The temple was so crowded that no one went in. My sister and her husband decided not to finish the tour and took a taxi back to the hotel. This tour was a lot of walking and not the best fit for our group of seniors. I would have preferred to visit less traveled, less busy temples and spots in Kyoto.
One slight hiccup was when I requested an 11am pickup instead of 1pm from our hotel to Haneda on the day of our departure. I thought it was set for the 11am pickup. It was not. After talking with the local contact from our travel company, we were able to get picked up around 12:30pm. This was one detail that our travel company said was received well in advance of our departure from the States, but never confirmed back with an itinerary change. And it was one I never followed up on. Lesson learned: don’t assume your plans are confirmed, always follow up.
The self-guide app was extremely helpful, and one that we referred to often to guide us on our trip. However, some details not in the self-guide app were in the second app. It was confusing to have to go back and forth to double-check things. One situation was with our Osaka to Kyoto pickup. By mistake we read in the self-guide app that the pickup time would be 11am, but that was the start time of our Kyoto tour! You have to go to the second app to see the pickup time was 9:00am. As a result, we were 30 minutes late getting to the start of our Kyoto Cultural tour!
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