Summer Palace (Yiheyuan)

De reisgroep was klein, dus het is erg ontspannend. Gids en chauffeur zijn geweldig bedrijf dat gedetailleerde informatie gaf over alle plaatsen die we bezochten!

Being a viator tour user for the past 6 years, one has come to expect certain standard or certain minimums. The problem began one day before the tour, where I get a call that they would need to cancel the booking as the tkts for the Forbidden city were sold out and they could not get any tkts due to govt. restrictions - which I was understanding of. No problem. But instead of a solution, all that they kept insisting on was, take the full refund - not our fault. All I wanted was, replace the forbidden city with an alternative site, and I would be fine. Flat refusal. Manager intervention was requested and they finally agreed. Next day, they began the tour at 7 am with a mini van, only for me with a guide and driver. But the time schedule was completely messy, lunch at 10:30, multiple shopping trips (for silk, for tea, for chinese traditional medicine....none of which feature in the description). It all felt forced and contrived. The guide only gave the bare basic info, which could be looked up on the description boards of the locations, hidden costs of some random ferry ride, some tip for complimentary foot massage - which wasn't even requested. All in all, I was happy with the manager who agreed to accommodate me to show me Beijing in my one day there. But everything else about the tour just left a bad taste.

At the beigining the experience was ok, however, we started going to the temples like runing without being able to look some important ones and the tour guide she decided which were the good ones with out asking and when I told her that I wanted to climb to a temple in the summer palace she told me that we do not have enough time and I got mad since they took me first to a pearls shop that was not part of the tour ( for sure she got commission from the sopping in that store) and we lost more than half an hour there and with such time we should be able to finishing the parts of summer palace I did not see.