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Claudia was engaging and really funny! We had a great time learning about the things which make Lisbon quirky and lovable!
Sara was a passionate, energetic and informative tour guide. The stories of Portuguese history really came to life for us and I will never forget Henri the Navigator or Afonso de Abuquerque thanks to her juicy details! Her love for food and her description of the perfect pasteis de nata was rhapsodic, almost fanatical, and the restaurant recommendations she sent at the end of the tour were fantastic (unfortunately it's easy to eat bad food in Lisbon without recommendations). Very entertaining tour for us!
Over the past 15 years I've taken a lot of walking tours, both free and paid, in many countries across Europe and Asia, and I would describe the attitude that good tour guides have as "passionate" or "enthusiastic". Sara's attitude could best be described as "sardonic". The first few stops of the tour were pretty good, but after Sao Bento station it went downhill. Even when information was being conveyed, it was delivered with an unhelpful amount of sarcasm – for example at Rua de Flores, she was describing how the goldsmith shops preferred to be on the side of the street lit up by the morning sun, but the food shops preferred to be in the cooler afternoon sun, "like this famous Portuguese ice-cream shop" (pointing to Haagen Dazs). At the next few stops after Rua de Flores, we got barely any information about Porto and seemed to instead get more details about Italy and hating on Spanish people. We cut our losses and left after just one hour (which I have never done in any of my dozens of other tours ever!) and giving a nominal 10€ courtesy tip. We were really disappointed because we fell in love with Porto when we arrived (and I had experienced an amazing tour with guide Claudia from this company, Take, in Lisbon) but we will have to look for another tour guide who can convey their genuine love and appreciation for this wonderful city.
The route was well-chosen and not too strenuous, covering Notre Dame, Palais de Justice, Pont Neuf, and the Louvre. Unfortunately the group was very big so we couldn't always get near to Eva and her microphone system didn't project well or was quite echoey, and that together with her slightly thick accent and fast speed of speech, made it difficult for us to hear, I think we only caught 60-70% of what was said! What we did hear was pretty interesting though. It was a decent light introduction to Paris.
