Review of 2 Days Beijing Classic Tour by Jeannie

We appreciate the service you provided at ChinaTour.Net. However, there were a lot of surprises that I didn\'t know about on this tour. I wish I had known about the jade museum(shop) visit beforehand. I guess it wouldn\'t have been so bad if I had known about it and would welcome them as a break from the monotony of just sightseeing. The drawbacks from the factory visits were that it took up our time. For example: We drove one hour to visit the Temple of Heaven, which is very beautiful. We had 45 minutes to walk around there and had to get back to a meeting place to adjourn. we also spent 30 minutes at the silk factory to look at their manufacturing process of silk and \"shopping\" trip. I didn\'t buy any silk blanket even though I wanted to buy this item before coming to China. I guess because it was a surprise for me and I didn\'t plan on \"shopping\" on a sightseeing trip. I try not to be a compulsive buyer and plan all my shopping so I didn\'t open my wallet as a result. Maybe they did offer us a deal, maybe not but I just wasn\'t open to buying any silk blanket at that time. I did, however, shopped at the Jade Museum. It was for small items and medium items. I just think that the website should have inform us of the \"side trips\" for shopping. I remembered that we also took a tour in Hong Kong. The tour guide had tons of stories to share with us and explained most of the buildings and places we passed as the bus drove by. I felt like that I got a pretty good history of Hong Kong by the time we reached our destination. Our tour guide in Hong Kong was so interesting and had lots of stories to tell. I asked tour guide at times about the places we passed in Beijing, she answered my questions with one or two words. I would like to give her a hint that she should narrate Beijing history more as our tour guide. She was a very nice person. She gave my daughter a big juicy peach to eat when my daughter was being fussy, but she was not informative enough as a Beijing tour guide. Was it a lack of knowledge of Beijing on her part? I guess i had a high expectation of tour guide after our tour in Hong Kong and expect tour guide to be an enthusiastic person about the trip as we were. All the places we visited were very crowded too in Beijing. I guess i wouldn\'t travel to China in the summer months again. I would go in the Spring when the weather is cooler. The lunch was good. The food was catered to westerners. Our driver for the airport pickup was very punctual and patient. One of them waited at the airport even though our flight was late. The airport pickup for our return flight to the U.S. was right on time, waiting downstairs 5 minutes before 10 a.m., the time I asked him to transfer us to the airport. He was very curteous and loaded all of our suitcases onto a cart once he arrived at the airport and was very detailed in explaining to us where to go at the airport terminal.