We signed up for the Great Wall and Forbidden City one day tour. The first tour guide, Sue, basically told us that if we went to the Forbidden City first, we would not be able to go to the Great Wall because the roads are frequently closed. She said we had to go to the Great Wall first. The Great Wall was magnificent, but the "lunch at a local hotel" as advertised on the website was this horrible lunch at a little hole in the wall restaurant, and we did not get to choose what we ate. Sue left us in the restaurant that had not one person who spoke English. We had to use our app just to find out where the bathroom was to wash our hands. The lunch was just brought to us without a description of what it was, and we had no choices in what we got to eat. It was basically take it or leave it. Then in the car, she explained that we would have to go to the ticket booth at the Forbidden City, lie to the agent by saying that we didn't know we had to buy advanced tickets. We would go in by ourselves, and Sue would meet us one of the exits despite the fact that we paid for an English speaking tour guide. Firstly, we were not too keen on lying about the ticket requirement, especially when she stated that our tickets were booked for the morning. Tickets to tourist places are booked with your passport, so what happens when they agent calls us out on the lie after discovering that we did have tickets for the morning. I contacted my colleague as I live in Australia, but work for a Chinese company. My colleague called the tour company to explain what was happening as we were in the car with the driver and Sue. The company eventually got a different tour guide, Adele, who was FABULOUS, but we had to endure Sue being extremely rude as she was obviously angry that our Chinese friend had contacted the company on our behalf. We overheard a heated conversation between her and presumably someone from the company. We think that Sue was LAZY and did not want to walk around in the afternoon heat. I would give only ONE star except Adele saved the day with her thorough tour of the Forbidden City that saved the day. I'd give Adele FIVE stars if we had her all day. We can't say enough about how awesome Adele was, especially in comparison to Sue.
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[3 of 5 Stars!]
