If you’re in Beijing trying to find things to do then China Tours has the answers. So when you’ve booked your travels with China travel and found the areas you want to stay and are ready for your adventures and ready to do some sight seeing then get ready for your tour with a tour guide. Going on tour with a tour guide is probably the most popular and best thing you can do. The reason why I say this is because if you go on tour with a tour guide you don’t feel the need to put in so much energy trying to findout information on all the tourist attractions around Beijing.
I was on a tour the other day with a friend and we went with China Tours and chose a 9 hour long trip. We visited the Forbidden City, Tian’anmen Square, Temple of Heaven and then had a short lunch break to visit the Qiuyiyuan Chinese Restaurant and Stop off at the Lihengtang Pearl Market and afterwards we visited the Summer Palace. The name of this tour was called the Emporer’s Tour. I was really impressed with this service because after I made reservations for this tour I actually had the tour guide on the phone the same day the reservation was made and the night before the tour. The tour guide was trying to find out where me and my friend needed to be picked up from and told us what time a taxi driver will be at our hotel to transfer us to a tour bus in the morning.
The next day the taxi driver was waiting at the reception of our hotel and picked us up at exactly the time allocated. Talk about efficiency! From our hotel the driver took us to the tour bus where another 17 people were joining us. I finally met the tour guide who I was in contact with the night before on the phone and when I spoke to him to say hi his personality was exactly how I imagined from his voice, very talkative and cheerful. The first part of the tour was the tour guide introducing himself. The tour guide talked us through the tour and the places we were to visit and gave passengers a short story on each main tourist attraction. This information was very useful and it was knowledgs you wouldn’t necessarily know if you weren’t visiting the attractions via a guided tour and made your own provisions to travel there.
The tour guide talked us through everything, it was incredible because there was never a dull moment and the time between the tour guide and walking around gave us plenty of time to take pictures. We generally stood around in a group listening to the tour guide for the most part of the tour but didn’t mind this because it gave us direction of where to walk and at the same time, time to absorb the sights. If you don’t like to stand around listening to a tour guide it didn’t matter because you can still take photos.
Forbidden City
The best thing about a tour guide is that he will talk about the tour and try to make general conversation with people in the group. It was really entertaining actually as we were following the tour guide most of the time and he was holding an umbrella on his shoulder just in case it rained. It was really funny because he reminded me of the character Charlie Chaplin.
Anyhow, our first stop was the Tian’nian square and from here we accessed the Forbidden City by foot. This was easy because when we got to the entrance of each building the tour guide had our tickets prepared for us for each time we arrived at each main tourist attraction. (It was easier that way because then we didn’t have to dig about in our bags for tickets etc.)
The tour guide talked us through a short story about the Forbidden City and then we moved on to our next destination which was The Temple of Heaven. We wondered around here for a while and then we were taken to Qiuyiyuan Chinese Restaurant for something to eat. From here we went to the Pearl Market. Stopped off at the pearl market for a while and then went on to the summer palace.
The summer palace is amazing and with our tour guide we were sure to find out stories behind the scenes. The tour guide even showed us around all the shops in the summer palace. We felt guilty because we really wanted to spend our Yuan being really appreciative of all the cool things they had there, we didn’t buy anything.
After a long day of walking around we finally travelled back to the hotel. It was a bonus because the tour bus dropped us off directly outside our hotel. We were absolutely exhausted by the end of the day. For more tours and places to see within the Beijing area please visit Beijing Tours. If not there are many other tours available please visit www.chinatraveldepot.com.
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