Private 4-hour Dublin Tour with a Local Host

I would fist like to say, we have done private tours in Paris, Amsterdam, London and Hamburg. So we knew what to expect. What we expected and what we got were no where close to the same. Our tour guide Ross, had emailed me a few days before the tour with what he thought we would like to do. No where on that list was, Temple Bar area, St. Patricks, Ha'Penny bridge... he spoke of where someone was executed, the Liberties, Dublin Castle and a couple of museums. In my return email I told him the places we would like to go (listed above) and that we were not interested in going into museums during our tour, that we would return on our own time if we wanted. The day of the tour, we received a phone call in our hotel saying that Ross' train had broken down and he would be 45 minutes to an hour late. No problem, things happen. Our group were down in the lobby waiting and saw him arrive by taxi. We start the tour and right away he changes directions on us and we go back the way we came because he realized St. Patricks was near our hotel. Once there is asked us a couple of puzzling questions and told us a little history. He never offered us to go inside. We then walked an hour to see where someone was executed. Then we walked down the other direction, just to turn around and walk back the direction we came. We did go to Christ Church and the Dublin wall where he sat down while we walked around. Any questions we asked it seemed like he had to look up on his phone. We ended up going to one of the museums and he highly suggested we go thru it. It seemed to us that he needed a break. After this time, we had all come to the conclusion that we no longer needed him as a tour guide. We had spent 3 hours walking in circles without learning a lot, besides where someone died. It seemed like he was struggling to keep the tour going, and that he would rather be somewhere else. Maybe he was hungover, we are not sure. We ended up letting him go an hour early. I truly hate to give a bad review but after having such great guides in previous cities, this one was highly disappointing.

The host was friendly and was willing to meet us at our hotel outside of old city and escort us in. She asked us for our input into what we would like to see and attempted to accommodate us. What she was truly lacking was experience as a host. While being a local her expressed knowledge of the area and history was not that good. We received a lot more information about the city from local experience cab drivers.

Conor was an amazing guide for my tour. He met me right on time, listened to what I wanted to see and made excellent suggestions on other things that were very interesting. It is the only way to go when you have a short amount of time to see a lot of sites! Thanks and hats off to Conor