Private Guide

chicago, illinois
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Private Guide
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We spent two weeks in Spain and I had to plead with my wife to take a Tangier day tour. Her mental picture of Tangier was one of crime, poverty and filth. Ask her today and she would say it was the highlight of our trip. If you’re adventurous you can tour it yourself. I live in Chicago and I feel more unsecure on some streets here than I did in Tangier. Never once did I feel unsafe. I personally feel the added effort and expense of a personal guide was well worth it. I spent quite a bit of time researching guides and did not know which reviews were legitimate and which were posted by the guides themselves. Quite confusing. I ended up hiring a guide Rick Steves talked about in his Spain book. Aziz Begdouri made our Tangier trip memorable. He arranged for our Ferry tickets, met us at the port, gave us a personal tour of the city and dropped us off at a Moroccan restaurant for a leisurely authentic Moroccan lunch. Running late for the return ferry he whisked us thru customs. By all means visit Tangier, hire a personal guide if you can afford the extra expense and google Aziz Begdouri if you want a guaranteed Moroccan adventure.

Wakefield...
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1. Re: Private Guide
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wow! how cool that i found this post! my husband and i along with my brother and his wife are traveling to spain next week for two weeks. we just confirmed with aziz a trip to tangier!! your email cetainly assures us that we made a good decision! i found out about aziz in rick steve's andalucia region snapshot travel book. thanks for your review!

chicago, illinois
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Tell Aziz Chicago Bob and Rose said hello. You will love the trip. Email him with any specific requests. It was our 25th anniversary and he set us up at a romantic restaurant for a long leisurely lunch. Let me know if you have any other questions. See my Barcelona post. We spent one week in Barcelona and one week driving in the south. You will love Spain Also!

Chicago, Illinois
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Aziz Begdouri was our tour guide in Tangiers over the Christmas break. You are right it couldn't have been easier. He arranged the ferry, picked us up at the port, walked us through customs and made sure we got back on the ferry.

Our tour was fantastic. He is a wealth of knowledge, not just the sites but really giving us insight into the country and its people. We went to the coast, rode camels and donkeys, toured the city and the Casbah. Walking with Aziz was like walking through a town with a good friend. He knew everyone and walked us through the shops. He likes to get to know your tastes so that he can make sure that you enjoy yourself. He picked a wonderful resturaunt for a late lunch.

All in all a wonderful trip and one of the high points of our Spain trip. BTW Aziz email is AzizTours@Hotmail.com.

chicago, illinois
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Thanks for your reply. Glad to hear you enjoyed the tour as much as I did. My screen saver includes my Spain vacation pictures and the one of myself and my wife on camels always causes a smile. Hope you also captured some great memories!

Florida
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Thank you, chicagobob53 and BlakeM285, for your post. 3 friends and I will be in Costa Del Sol, Spain at the end of March 2011 and were considering a day trip to Tangiers. How much does Aziz Begdouri charge per person for the day? Also, what is the cost of the Ferry from Tarifa to Tangiers? If you don't want to post it, please send me message. Thanks for your comments.

Tampa, Florida
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We just returned from our one day trip to Tangier with Aziz Begdouri as our guide. Like the other posters in this thread, I HIGHLY recommend that you hire him, if he is available.

I actually have his fees but I am reluctant to post it online and of course they may fluctuate. You may contact me personally or you can ask him at:

aziztour@hotmail.com OR 011 212 661639332

The ferry was 66 Euros per person round trip. He runs two trips: a less expensive walking tour or the Grand tour which includes a half day comfortable coach to the outskirts of the city with a driver, followed by the walking tour in the afternoon. We did the full tour and did not regret it.

Yes. It was an expensive day, if you include the round trip ferry. But it was highly memorable and may have been the absolute highlight of our trip to Spain.

If you do go, and I think that you should, I think you will agree with Rick Steve's who writes that if all you can manage is a one day trip to Tangier, then go because it will be infinitely more interesting than one additional day in Spain. And absolutely you should hire Aziz. I am certain that you will be glad that you did.

Boston
1 post
7. Re: Private Guide
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We also hired Aziz Begdouri to guide us for a day in Tangier. He is a great guy. Professional, courteous, knowledgable. He is a native of Tangier and is well versed in 5 or 6 languages. He was educated in English so he is able to very effectively convey history, cultural, political, social information. We are a big load too with 7 kids in tow. We saw and learned a ton in the short timeframe we had. Highly recommended.

Edited: 9 years ago
Nashville, Tennessee
3 posts
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Our guide Aziz did a perfectly fine job if you are a tourist and not a traveler. As many in our group have traveled extensively both with and without guides, we found Aziz's tour disappointing. Unlike our favorite guides from the past, Aziz has a set tour that he provides right down to the streets that you walk and points of interest he visits. He made no attempt to learn what we were really interested in seeing and doing and simply assumed what we were interested.

When traveling, we prefer to get a true sense of the culture, food, and people of the area we are visiting and expressed that to Aziz both via email and in person to no avail. We felt like Aziz's tour gave us the "tourist" side of Morocco which was of little interest to us.

Others have made comments that Aziz seems to know everyone wherever they go...that is a bad sign for a tour guide in my opinion. Additionally, and perhaps most frustrating of all, Aziz was on his cell phone at least 50% of the time he was with us, approx. 6 hours.

I am not exaggerating. He both placed and received phone calls the entire day. Our joke at the end of our tour was that we could find Aziz by listening for his ring tone. We all agreed that Aziz was a nice, personable man who speaks English well and knows his city.

If you are interested in checking off lists of sites you want to visit while in Morocco without getting a true feeling of what life is actually like, he's your guy. If you visit a place to immerse yourself in the culture and experience, or at the very least learn, about it, I suggest another guide. Lynn.....TN, USA

Edited: 9 years ago
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Removed on: 02 January 2016, 04:30
Brooklyn, New York
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I am in complete agreement with what you have written about the Aziz tour. Last week I traveled to Tanger from Tarifa and Aziz assigned his cohort Mohammed to give us the Grand Tour. While Mohammed and our driver Jamal were personable, the tour itself was very commerical to the point of being draining. It is true that one who is a traveler as opposed to being a tourist would not be satisfied with this tour. When I traveled through Morocco with experience it tours, two years ago, I received a wonderful cultural sense of the people, the land, the food, etc. I camped overnight in the Sahara, ate with local Berbers in the High Atlas Mountains, and received a wonderful sense of beautiful Essaouira. I was not subjected to myriad sales pitches from shop keepers so that my guide could get a commission. Perhaps the most disconcerting part of the Aziz tour was that we were asked to pay 101 euros, when originally I was quoted 93 euros via the correspondence I had with Aziz. After going through a tour which lacked a true sense of life in Tanger, and in which we were driven to touristy camel rides, a sub-par touristy restaurant (albeit playing a sitar while sporting a fez, with the restaurant musicians was fun...and the restaurant was beautiful), and a rather lacking cave of Hercules, and being swarmed by shopkeepers clearly in cohoots with Mohammed, 93 euros seemed awfully steep. To pay more felt like even more of a scam. Thankfully our overnight stay was saved by our stay at La Tangerina where we had a beautiful experience and an amazing Moroccan dinner. Should we return to Tanger we will revisit La Tangerina and set up a day trip through their contacts, so that we can venture out to a neighboring village where we can get a genuine sense of life in Tanger!

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