City Sightseeing Potsdam Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour

We enjoyed the train trip from Berlin Mitte to Potsdam and were looking forward to our hop on hop off bus tour in this beautiful city of palaces. Someone from the company had a stand set up across from the station and told us the HOHO bus wouldn't be leaving for at least another 30mins but we could take the other bus that only stops @ 3 of the palaces and has a live commentary. So we chose this option knowing that we could do the HOHO bus after this one. The first thing we noticed were the extremely uncomfortable seats and then that the live commentary was in German and our English version was via earplugs. Have they ever done a tour like this previously????!!!! We were seated near the front and a few other English speaking travellers were likewise sprinkled throughout the mainly German speaking travellers. After several minutes of commentary, we soon realised we couldn't possibly hear our version because of the loud microphone with German drowning it out = 2 huge headaches!!! At the first stop, where we were spoken to in 2 language groups, we requested that the non-German group be placed @ the back of the bus and the rest up the front.....what genius.....it worked :) The visit to the palaces was informative but quite short and it was almost impossible to take photos of so many of the sites that we wanted to for eg, Brandenburg Gate, as the driver didn't slow down for photo opportunities :( On arrival back @ Potsdam station we were planning on using the HOHO Bus to see more of the city at our leisure, but were told the bus is only every hour!! The thought of being left stranded @ a stop here as we were left stranded @ Eastside Gallery by Big Bus Berlin was too much, to tempt fate....so we jumped on the reliable train back to Berlin. At least we saw some of Potsdam but certainly not what we had planned or expected....very disappointing!

We were very disappointed, the buses only run every hour, and there is so much to see and do that they need to be every 30 minutes, like it says in the brochure. We were dropped at the bridge, which doesn't need an hour to view, so waited after 30 minutes, the bus came, slowed to turn around, and told us we couldnt get on! We caught the 3.50pm bus to go to stop 9, but it wasn't going there, it was the last bus!! Frustration after frustration.

Waste of money - the explanations in English are fine but the audio quality is terrible with half the earphone outlets out of order. It is an automatic recording so the system has errors. However, the main problem is that the bus goes around every hour - in August! which is ridiculous for a hop on hop off bus.