HELP! Former Asia Cruisers...Beijing to Xian??

[Hlitner]

This thread is quite interesting. We are very independent travelers, but when we were in China (2 years ago) it was at the end of a 12 day Princess cruise from Bangkok. We decided to break our normal rule of never taking tours to do a 10 day tour through Princess which was actually run by CTA (the largest government owned tour company). We took 3 internal flights (all on time with better food than we get within the USA) and also did a few day cruise on the Yantze (lots of fun). We thought the Terra Cotta warriers were fantastic, but we never did get a good explanation as to why the Chinese has all but stopped further exploration on this site. We did stay at the Beijing Hotel (twice) and loved its location which is in the best part of Beijing across the street from a large urban mall (high class by even Western standards) and within walking distance to the Forbidden City, tons of restaurants, cafes, etc. The Pearl Market is worth the taxi fare (cheap) and has lots of great bargains in clothes, watches, etc. On the 4th floor there are a group of good pearl stores, but the one I would recommend is a place called Sharon's where they have thousands of pearl necklaces and have built a solid following among regular Western visitors because of high quality and reasonable prices.

 

Hank