VELTRA tours & activities, fun things to do

Ancient City Kyoto

Took morning tour. Guide was full of information and tour was very relaxing. Pace was just right and we stayed on schedule. Bus was comfortable. Easy pick up and drop off points. All fees were included in the tour price. Online booking was easy and we would do it again.

Kyoto is such a beautiful city and have a lot to offer

- The tour guide is excellent
- Learn a lot about the Japanese history
- The palace is very nice
- Nijo Castle is a must see
- Nara tour is interesting

Una excelente presentacion del Kyoto Antiguo

Muy buena organizacion. La guia muy organizada y conocedora del tema .

We love Yoshi!

We weren’t used to such a large tour group but Yoshi did a great job of keeping everyone excited and in tune with what was necessary. Great tour! It was super hot so we were dehydrated and tired but over all a great experience

Morning Kyoto Tour

Far too large of a group. We could never hear the guide speaking unless we managed to get directly next to him. He had a microphone but never seemed to speak into it properly. I’d recommend just hopping a taxi and doing an audio tour instead of this. To be fair, the guide was incredibly nice and polite, as most Japanese we encountered were and the Nijo Castle and golden pavilion were lovely spots. I’d recommend skipping the ex-imperial palace unless you get advanced tickets with access to the interior.

Excellent

It was fun and very interesting afternoon with our tour guide Kay Zee (I hope I spelled his name correctly). He’s very knowledgeable about the temples we visited and also very engaging. He’s also a good story teller and knows a lot of trivia about Kyoto. I also learned something about geisha as relayed by our guide.
Overall great tour and great experience with our guide.
Highly recommended.

Excellent

I enjoyed this half day tour. The bus is comfy. Our tour guide nicknamed Kay Zee is a knowledgeable and cheerful guide. His funny lines make stories about Kyoto a very engaging sharing of anecdotes about the city.
I wish I have done a full day tour then I could have seen more attractions.
Highly recommended. Thank you to Kay Zee and thank you to JTB sunrise tours

Great morning tour!

We took the monring tour only, with friends and family. The tour was fast, but informative. It really gave you a taste of Japan, that made you itch for more. There is a lot compressed into this tour so time is really of the essence, still we did have time to enjoy and walk around the tour sites. Very good and would definitely recommend.

We would have preferred to spend more time at the attractions and less time at lunch. The tour guide was very informative, although at times it was hard to hear her at the attractions over background noise.

Could be better orginized

I attended with my wife the afternoon tour. Pick up location was very broad. We ended up looking for the tour guide office for over 15' as it was not indicated that the locqtion is at the basement level of a Mall near the Kyoto station. As a result, we were 2' late. Thankfully the bus that have already left came back because they needed to return a couple of passangers who were wrongfully assigned to our tour.

The first two visits to our tour were great! Very knowledgable tourguide and great Shrines!

On the third one, we were dropped at this great location at the bottom of the shrine. There were a number of stairs that we needed to climb. My wife has an issue with her knee, she wears a knee protective sleeve and she needs to avoid stairs. The tourguide told us there was a longer way to go to the shrine that was built for wheelchair users. She told us that there were a bunch of stores along the way and that we could browse these instead!!! We obviously wanted to attend the tour that we paid, so we tried meet up the group. However, noone was wiating for us at the top and we had to walk around on our own as our group was already on their way down.

The tour could have been better organized and prevent issues like these before hand, or at least let us know in advance that thebtour is not applicable for people with difficulties climbing stairs.

Couldn't hear what the guide said

When we were on the coach I was sat at the front and could hear everything the guide said. Once we were at the shrines the group was too big for most of us to hear. Many people just wandered off on their own because they were not benefitting from the guide's input. If you were close to her it was possible to hear but there were too many of us for this to be possible. I enjoyed the shrines but could just have easily made my own way there as I learnt nothing much from the guide.

Was awesome, the guide was amazing, very funny old woman with a yellow sponge. So nice tour

Really enjoyed the tour; got to see outstanding Kyoto sites.
Unfortunately, individuals returned to the bus late, and the rest of the stops were too rushed.

This was a great tour. Both tour guides were knowledgable and relayed lots of information about the sites, their history and general history of Kyoto. We were able to see much more on the tour than we could have done on our own.

I loved the places we went to see and the food was absolutely wonderful! The one BIG thing I was disappointed in, which ruined the tour for me, was that I could not understand our guide! She was supposed to be english speaking, but her accent was too heavy and she spoke very fast. She was a nice lady, but unless I got very close to her to watch her lips as she spoke, I couldn't understand most of what she said. Please get guides that speak clearly!

We enjoyed the tour very much. The guide was very knowledgeable and friendly. The lunch was ok, personally Japanese st<x>yle lunch would have been better.
I would recommend this tour.

Great friendly staff, very knowledgeable about local shrines and enjoyed hearing the history of each place. Recommend to others!

The guide in the morning was very professional and I really enjoyed the morning tour. However, in the afternoon I was given a seat at the back of the bus. Due to the engine noise at the back of the bus, and the noise of a kid sitting at the back, it was impossible to listen to the soft voice of the tour guide. I could not even hear the place we were going to visit. I knew the other travellers at the back had the same bad experience as I could see a couple requested to be changed to seats in the front and other guys also said they could not hear a word. Although I expressed my concern to the tour guide, I did not find any improvement. For the whole afternoon trip, I could not hear most of the thing the tour guide said on the bus. It was very frustrated and disappointed. It is a big bus. I hope you will consider improving the microphone and sound system on the bus and also advise the tour guide to speak louder and slower, so everyone on the bus can hear the useful information provided by the tour guide. I would also like you to point out to your clients that if they bring small children on the bus, they should be considerated to be quiet.

It was very nice. The guidance, the food, the spots chosen for the tourists - all were nice.

If you want to sit back and leave the driving (and navigating Japan) to someone else, then this is the tour for you. I loved the fact that lunch was included in the full day option.

My daughter and I were very tired after two weeks of walking every day and taking multiple trains to our sightseeing destinations; the ease of the bus taking us door to door, and our (very wonderful) tour guide explaining everything we might not have learned any other way was very good for us.

I also appreciated the efficiency of seeing so much all in one day. I feel confident that we got to view some of the major sights of Kyoto. I feel like we made the most of our last day in Kyoto.

The guide KC (Casey?) was hilarious. We really appreciated his happy, outgoing personality. It kept the tour light and fun, even though the day get rather long toward the end of the trip.

I highly recommend this tour. The price was reasonable for the amount of sights and information we received. Sugoi! (excellent)

Classical & Wonderful

This tour is a good start for someone like me; first time in Kyoto and clueless but curious!
As one of your classical bus tour, it goes to those major sites that can’t be missed! Plus, it gave me ideas on what to do and where to go in Kyoto for the rest of my trip.
The sweet lady that was my guide was wonderful at picking up the points on where to look. My personal favorite, was the Sanjusangen-do visited in the afternoon. It was first a little scary to have over a 1000 statues looking at you, but at the artistic talent taken to create the life-like statues of the Japanese idols is a personal must see!
Also the Kyoto Handicraft Center visited during lunch had some pretty cool stuff! Kimonos, artwork, jewelry, and even some anime goods. A great place to get an idea for what to buy for an “omiyage”!
Fun and overall interesting, after this trip, I can see why my friends said Kyoto is rich in culture.

A very busy but very interesting day.

It was a wonderful tour. However, lunch at the Handicraft Centre was a bit disappointing after having experienced the lunch provided on the Panoramic Tokyo tour.

It hit major sites in one day that we wanted to see, and the guides were good.

the morning and afternoon tour guides were very friendly and had a lot of information. A Very good day.

The tour was great. I enjoyed it very much. I would definately recommend this tour especially if you've never been to Kyoto before. It covers most of the highlights in Kyoto. The tour guide was very nice and was very informative.

It rained, but we appreciated the free umbrellas very much and used them often, later. For a visitor with little time to spend in Kyoto, this is the ideal introduction to Kyoto's heritage. The full-day trip allows you to submerge yourself in way which the half-day tours could not. Not visiting the Imperial Palace was a disappointment: it was not evident from information on the net that it would not be open on this particular Friday, which we had selected specifically to visit the Palace.