Full day tour to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Salt Mine with a local guide from Krakow

An educational eye-opener, one that I think everyone should experience at least once in their lifetime

Prior to visiting Krakow I had read a lot of horror stories about companies offering Auschwitz-Birkenau tours and either cancelling, letting people down last minute or not being able to provide tickets. I found recommendations for auschwitztour.co.uk and it gave me confidence to book a tour with them. We booked the auschwitz and salt mine combined tour. The communication from Slawek was excellent, advising a driver will pick us up on the day agreed (exact time tbc) and payment is to the driver on the day (unlike other tours that want money up front). The day before we got an email confirming our pickup time and further details of the itinerary. We also got a WhatsApp from our driver Bartek who offered to do a lunchbox for 15 zloty each which we kindly took up his offer of. The morning of the tour we were advised our pickup would be 6:15-6:20. We stepped out or hotel at around 6:10 and Bartek was already waiting for us. We then proceeded to Auschwitz with 2 other couples where the admittance to the museum was quick, simple and organised. We only had to queue for around 10 minutes in the short queue compared to the main one and went straight in to begin our guided tour organised the museum. On completion of Auschwitz we got our excellent lunchbox with freshly made baguettes, fruit, drink and snacks. We then were taken straight to Birkenau and again it was well organised where we went straight in with the same museum guide. Bartek then took us to the salt mines and assisted us through the queue for the guided tour and advised us to message him once completed and he would come and pick us up (the exit is a few hundred metres from the entrance). Bartek then took us back to our hotel (or offered to drop off somewhere else in krakow if we wanted). Both myself and my partner were very impressed with how well the tour was organised and how smoothly everything went. I want to thank Slavek and Bartek for an excellent (but sobering) day and I would recommend Auschwitztour.co.uk to anyone wanting to do a tour. I would definitely use them again if I wanted to do the tour again in the future.

Highly recommend this trip, great communication from the Company and then the driver who collected us. Our driver was excellent, professional, friendly and polite. We ordered the lunch bag from him which was good value and very tasty. We were very concerned after reading lots of posts on social media about trips being cancelled last minute or having to leave at 4:00 am to queue for tickets but our concerns were completely unfounded. We were picked up at 7:40 am as arranged and our driver Bartek had our tickets for the 9:30 tour. He then met us with our lunch in the 30 minute break before the shuttle to Birkenau. After the shuttle returned us to Aushwitz Bartek was waiting for us to take us to the salt mines.