Our guide picked us up 3 minutes late. That might not seem like a big deal but our whole group was there waiting for 15 minutes. Then he was kind of brusque and hurried us into the van, bossing us about where to sit in the van.
We arrived at Mt. Vernon at 2:40, and he hurriedly got us tickets because apparently most of the house is closed for renovations and the last virtual tour presentation started at 2:40. We came in at 2:45 and would have sat down quietly trying not to disturb the already going presentation, but our guide interrupted the speaker and basically asked her to start over, which prompted other audience members to give us scowling looks and I could hear people murmuring about us “not arriving on time”. Very uncomfortable! Especially knowing we would have been on time if our driver had been.
Then we didn’t have time to watch another movie or look at the house’s model, or even use the restroom because we had timed entry tickets to go through the two available rooms in the house. After that we didn’t have time to explore or photograph much because of our pickup time and everything closed between 4-5:00. The description of this tour said we’d have 3 hours at Mt Vernon, but we only had two hours.
On the drive back, those of us in the back of the van were really being thrown around as the guide hit some bumps/cracks in the road. One member of the tour asked the driver nicely to slow down over the bumps for our sake in the back. The driver basically brushed it off, and said he was going the speed limit, and it’s just the way the road was. Rude!
The description of this excursion also said we’d tour through Alexandria and see some historic sites like Robert E. Lee’s house. Nope, didn’t see that. I felt like we just went through a part of Alexandria because it was on our way back to DC. He didn’t point anything out, or drive us by the waterfront, or anything historic.
The tour’s description said it would last 5 hours but it lasted just over 3 hours. Very disappointing!
The driver did drop us back at our hotel which was nice. But then he thanked us and told us how appreciated tips were. Sorry, no tip from me on this trip.