Hello Elaine,
We had a wonderful, and extremely busy, trip.The hotels were excellent, all of the guides (and drivers) were wonderful, the cruise was fantastic, and you chose great places for us to see.

The biggest highlight, amongst many, was the Great Wall at Mutianyu. It was absolutely breathtaking. Often when you've heard a lot about a particular place, actually seeing it can be an anti-climax. But not the Great Wall!

The Terracotta Warriors were much, much better than I thought they were going to be. I didn?ˉt think there were as many repaired warriors to see, but it was quite astounding. Some of the other highlights were the pandas at Chongqing Zoo (we saw four), the whole cruise, especially the visit to the museum in Wuhan. It was an evening visit and the museum was opened especially for the passengers from our ship. The display was spectacular and we felt very privileged. The driver in Beijing also took us to see the Olympic Stadium which was somewhat out of his way and was much appreciated. Wandering around Shanghai and Beijing was fascinating and the shops are fantastic-much better than at home! Shanghai Museum was also very interesting. I liked the Chinese museums in general as they don?ˉt have an overwhelming amount of exhibits and are very accessible to all tourists in terms of labeling and lay-out.

There wasn't much we didn't like, but we probably could have seen less temples -it all got very confusing after a while! It was also a little annoying at times to be taken into the "tourist traps" which were invariably attached to the restaurants where we had lunch. It seemed to waste time when we could have been seeing the sights. Having said that, the silk factory in Shanghai was excellent and we picked up some good bargains.

If (when) we visit China again, we'll definitely try to avoid a Golden Week. There were so many people in Beijing it was difficult to move about at the popular tourist places, and the tours of Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden Palace and the Summer Palace were not very pleasant simply because of the throngs of people. I would also have liked to have seen Mao Zedong's body, but the queues were too long.

However, apart from my father getting lost in the Summer Palace (we found him again after about 30 minutes), the trip went very smoothly and we all had great fun.

We'd all like to thank you for all your hard work and professionalism in organising the trip for us, and we shall certainly be in touch with you to plan our next visit to China. It was a great relief to be able to have confidence that everything would go smoothly.

By the way, we were upgraded to the Shangri-la suite and two Junior suites for the cruise for much less than it would have been had we bought them up front. It was still expensive, but worth it as we had our own private deck and great views of everything.

Kind regards and many thanks for everything. I'll send some photos in a couple of days.

Genevieve and family

• Client's Information: Genevieve Margaret
• Tour Starting Dates: September 16, 2006
• Tour Itinerary: 21 Days Shanghai,Yangtze Cruise,Xi'an,Beijing Tour
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