Warsaw Driver/Guide

Although hiring a guide is the opposite of using a guidebook, Rick has always had a few driver references in most of his books. It's not always the case that a driver is also a qualified guide himself, so you may need to lower your expectations a bit.

Also, Warsaw is a well-developed modern city. If "reasonable price" means "as cheap as possible", you may be disappointed by the cost for private service. As a last-minute measure, if you stay at a real hotel (we were at the Hilton), they may have a list at the concierge or front desk.

We did hire car services in Krakow (for Auschwitz-Birkenau), and in Wroclaw (for the two Churches of Peace.) There is quite a lot to see in the city of Warsaw. Are you in Warsaw for a lot of days?

Wikipedia mentions a large number of Radziwill palaces. Do you mean "Presidential Palace (Polish: Pałac Prezydencki)". It's easily walkable from the HIlton.

I'll be in Warsaw 5 nights at the Bristol and maybe move on to the Indigo if I want a change. There's are some advertised day trips to Chopin's birth home out in the countryside, those include a stop at a castle or the ethnograpahic park. If no one else is in the group, the solo person has to pay €368. That is about the same as I paid for a private driver to take me, solo, from New Orleans on to some outlying plantations. And about the same as a day with a private driver from Moscow to Suzdal. I did expect it would cost less in Poland. What did you pay for your private driver? I'd like to have an idea, please.

In Warsaw: When we visited Poland in October 2022, we had Hubert Pawlik of Warsaw-City Tours (https://warsaw-citytours.com/) to guide us to some of the numerous WWII sights in Warsaw. Although we covered quite a bit, we will definitely engage Hubert the next time we are in Warsaw to continue our education, including the Warsaw Ghetto and POLIN Museum. (While we visited the POLIN Museum by ourselves, it was rushed because we were covering a lot of ground that day.) Hubert is also quite flexible and tailored his WWII Warsaw Uprising 1944 tour to focus on the Wola area. It was a very comprehensive look at the Uprising Museum, The Insurgents Park and Cemetery, Pawiak Prison, as well as the Mausoleum of Struggle & Martyrdom. Hubert Pawlik has the passion, expertise, and in-depth knowledge to make such a tour very worthwhile and meaningful. And that was just a WWII focus. He has tours for other subjects and we will certainly avail ourselves of some of those. You can do preparatory reading and tour sites yourself, but still miss a lot in a place like Warsaw. Case in point: we toured Lazienski Park by ourselves, and when Hubert asked if we had seen such and such, which we hadn’t, we realized that we’d missed something significant. We wouldn’t have missed it with Hubert!
Outside of Warsaw: If you are looking for an experienced, knowledgeable, and flexible driver and/or guide beyond the city, we more than highly recommend Hubert Pawlik for this too. He spent a very long day with us, not only leading an expert and informative tour of the Radziwills’ Nieborow Palace (Nieborow & Arkadia Tour), but drove us to meet my relatives near Sierpiec. Going beyond being just a driver, Hubert surprised us by taking us to the Sierpiec skansen museum of rural life, as well as a visit to a local Jewish cemetery, and also found a flower shop, so I could buy a bouquet. Then he acted as interpreter and charming guest at a five-hour visit with my relatives. It was very late by the time we got back to Warsaw, but Hubert was perfect company. I do know this, we could not have accomplished this all by ourselves and are forever indebted to Hubert Pawlik for an incredibly memorable day.
Conclusion: You can save money by not hiring a guide. However, if you want to get the most value out of your travels, local guides are the best way. We found Hubert Pawlik of Warsaw City Tours guidance more than proof of that.