Old Town Alexandria and Mount Vernon Tour

Tour from Washington DC out to Mount Vernon via Alexandria. This was a coach tour. There was no briefing given as to the plan for the day although the guide introduced himself. We first drove around Alexandria with various sights pointed out. The coach had pink cherry blossom wrap around it so all the windows (except the windscreen) were obscured so it made viewing difficult and that part of the tour a bit pointless to be honest. We then arrived at Mount Vernon which is a lovely place to visit. We were guided around the grounds and then the Mt Vernon staff guide you through the house. At times the ground tour felt a bit rushed and we were very much herded and rounded up with a roll call every so often. Felt a bit like being in a school party! The house was really interesting and the grounds lovely - am amazing view of the river. The tour was expensive for what it was. Mount Vernon is not so far from Washington and with hindsight we should have looked at making our own way there for the day.

This Tour is much more than a bus ride to Mount Vernon. Our guide was friendly and gave a history lesson the entire trip. I'm a history buff and learned many new facts regarding Washington's daily life, family, and the Alexandria area. If I went back to Mount Vernon, I would do this tour again.

Mnt Vernon and Old Town Alexandria are amazing. A must-see destination while you are on your vacation in DC or Vergina. So much history here and a beautiful setting. The reason I rated this tour a 2 is because it simply was not worth the money we paid. I pay money for tours so I can learn things that I otherwise would not find out on my own. Most of the historic sites in and around DC have a lot of history boards telling you a little bit about the area etc. Mnt Vernon was loaded with these all around the property and they were very well done. Meaning, you can learn quite a bit of info just by doing a self-guided tour and reading the history boards. A good tour guide, IMO, should be able to tell you more details and back stories, etc than what you could simply learn on your own. The other thing that I was disappointed with regarding this particular tour was the amount of time that was wasted once we actually got to Mount Vernon. Our tour bus left the DC area at exactly 10am. It arrived at Mnt Vernon at exactly 11am. When we arrived at the visitor center, our tour guide informed us to "hang out" at the gift shop and cafeteria for one full hour before meeting back at the entrance of the visitor center to start our tour at 12pm. So we literally sat around waiting for an hour at the gift shop not doing anything before we could start our tour. This was a complete and total waste of time. The tour felt very rushed and we didn't even get to see the full property. That hour that we spent at the gift shop/cafeteria could have gone to much better use. The actual description of tour says you will have leisure time to walk around the property and explore. That was not at all our case. Had we not waisted the one hours time in the gift shop, we would likely had time to do this. In all, I think Trip Advisor is a good company and generally does a great job. We booked a DC Monuments Bike Tour with them which was amazing! Very much worth the money. The biggest difference was our tour guide. Our tour guide at Mnt Vernon was not very good. Our tour guide for the bike tour was amazing. Had we had the tour guide at Mnt Vernon that we did on our bike tour, I think it would have been a very different experience. So, if you do end up booking this tour, see if you can do some homework on your actual tour guide beforehand. Make sure you get a good one or it could be a bust like it was with us.