Gourmet Food Walking Tour in Athens with Donuts and Greek Wine

Great experience - but come with an empty stomach!

We had a great time on this tour. While we had originally booked it as a private experience, it ended up becoming a group one (we were informed ahead of time and were given the chance to cancel if we wanted to). It was actually a lot of fun to do this with others. We would STRONGLY recommend you skip breakfast before this experience... you aren't going to get a few small food samples. They provide an extraordinary amount of food over 4 hours - delicious and diverse. But a lot. Our tour guide, Adele, was very informative and a great guide.

via Viator

Our Guide Never Showed! We lost half a day!

We booked the private, guided food tour because my husband and I only had two days in Athens and despite it being much more costly (over $130 each) we wanted it to be an awesome and unique experience. Sometimes the group tour dynamic gets too big feeling, so we upgraded to this private and expensive option with high expectations. After booking, I got a text via WhatsApp a few weeks later and I was told that our meeting place had changed, which now meant a 40 minute walk from our hotel vs a 15 minute walk. But I responded fine and confirmed. The message author introduced herself as my Viator agent and gave me my guide’s name and phone number for emergencies. We arrived at 11:30am-which was thirty minutes early to our meeting place. Another couple was also there and their private guide picked them up a few minutes early. We waited and waited. I called our guide’s phone number that viator had a provided - No answer. We waited. I called. No answer I messaged my Viator customer service contact. No response. We waited. It was the hottest day on record in Athens and we waited 45 minutes outside in a busy and noisy square with no guide showing. More than $350 for this tour and we were entirely blown off! We finally left and had basically lost our entire day from morning (didn’t eat breakfast because of the food that was coming) walking across town to the new meeting location, in the heat, and then still had to walk back to our hotel. Our customer service contact responded about an hour later and apologized for the guide not showing. I asked for a full refund which I received later that night. What a disappointment. We have enjoyed food tours all over the world (Paris, Italy, NYC and more) and were so looking forward to our Athens experience. I have booked many tours with Viator and although appreciate that things can happen, don’t feel that a refund was adequate. We wasted half a day and no alternative was offered and no additional customer credit or future offering was made to secure me as a future customer. Although our agent was apologetic and said that they won’t use that guide again - it still leaves a poor impression. My many other Viator tour experiences have been solid but I don’t know that I’ll be able to trust booking with confidence again.

Response from the operator: Hello Jennifer, We are sorry about the issue with your tour. The guide had a personal emergency and for some reason couldn't get through to you to let you know about the incident and that he can't do the tour. Your tour was fully refunded the same day. Please let us know if there's anything else we can do for you.

via Viator