This is a great tour for first timers to China or Xi'an. It is a private tour - driver, guide plus the two of us.
The booking process is easy and Lily was communicative about the details well in advance. There was some issue locating us at our hotel and she was persistent in calling us to make sure that we had reached and were ready to go the next morning. We exchanged a couple of texts with our guide Cathy and she recommended an early start (8 AM) to get places before traffic nightmares and crowds!
Our guide turned out to be Jackie (as Cathy was out with a cold) and he turned out to be a fun, informative and excellent guide. He had local knowledge but also supplemented information that would be more interesting to American tourists. We started at the Terracotta warriors site/museum and hands down this is a place you need to go BUT you will benefit from a small group and a knowledgeable guide like Jackie. So much history and information but he managed to keep it both interesting and easy to absorb :)
Lunch was biang biang noodles - highlight of the day (we cover lunch). We went off to see the city wall followed by a guided walk through the Muslim Quarter and a calligraphy market ending at the Beilin Museum. With Jackie helping us out, we got to know rates for places to come later on our own, other attractions and timings, where/how to get discounts and even hand drawn maps with metro stations to guide us on other days!! He even wrote us instructions in Mandarin to show to people to process our requests! Best part - he followed up via email on the remaining two days to make sure we were ok and also to check on what we saw.
Amazing experience and we would say that if possible request Jackie when you book this tour - he is worth it!!
