Beijing Tour for Family with Kids

The Forbidden City

Your private guide will welcome you and pick you up at the airport and you will be taken by private, professionally-chauffeured car directly to you hotel. Your guide will help you check in. We take the stress out of travel, so you can enjoy China more with your family.

Free-Time Ideas

• Visit a Beijing snack street, and taste what Beijing people eat as traditional snacks.

• The kongfu show and acrobatic show are wonderful performances loved both by adults and children. You can ask your guide (an expert on Beijing) for ideas and recommendations to get an exciting free night. Or see Discover More for ideas.

Hotels: Here are three recommended choices based on feedback and value.

Days Inn Forbidden City / Sunworld Hotel / Crowne Plaza

Tian'anmen Square
on Chinese National Day, 2009

After your Western breakfast at your hotel, you start your journey in Beijing. The Tian’anmen Square (‘Gate of Heavenly Peace Square’) is the first destination.

This world’s largest public square can accommodate 1,000,000 people, so you don’t need to elbow the crows. The square is an essential attraction for school kids’ field trips of Beijing. If you are interested in the daily flag-raising ceremony at sunrise, you can ask your guide to escort you. But you need prepare for early rising and possible crowded camera-toting tourists.

Walking northward from the square, you will enter the renowned Forbidden City. This largest and best-[reserved imperial palace was constructed in 1420. Your private guide will explain the architectural culture, history, and interesting anecdotes behind the palace to you when escorting you to visit the Forbidden City.

You will have your lunch in Courtyard 7 Restaurant, a restaurant serving new modern French dishes. The restaurant is restored from a traditional quadrangle courtyard, and it is located in a hutong.

In the afternoon, you will hop on a rickshaw to ride through the hutongs, the narrow alleys between rows of quadrangle dwellings. There you might come across children playing football or seniors playing Chinese chess by the sides. It is a nice way to get a snapshot of traditional Beijing people’s life.

After that you will pay a visit to a local family who is living in a traditional and original quadrangle welling. There you also can try your hand on painting operatic masks in a pattern of your choosing and learn the meaning of deferent masks. Later, you will visit a time-honored local man’s pearl workshop and store and learn how to spot a fake.

GOOD TO KNOW

• Courtyard 7 — Trip Advisor’s ‘Traveler’s Choice of 2012’ Rated 4.5/5.
• Hutong Family Visit — Highly recommended by customers and travel reviews as ‘making the hutongs worth it’.
• Want to discover more in the hutongs? Add DIY traditional Chinese handicraft to your Beijing itinerary.

Hiking on the Jinshanling Great Wall Section

You will have a Western breakfast at your hotel. Your private guide and driver will be waiting in the lobby, prepared with bottled water and map, ready to maximize your time.

In the morning you will visit the Temple of Heaven, the royal altar where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties worshipped heaven. Before you enter the Temple of Heaven, you will come across lots of local people doing their morning exercises, including playing tai chi, singing cage birds, writing calligraphies on the ground, and kicking shuttlecocks. You can join them to share the happiness with the local people.

After that you will move on to the Great Wall at Mutianyu, which is about a 2-hour drive from the Temple of Heaven.

restaurant quite near Mutianyu — Xin Shuang Quan Restaurant (鑫双泉餐厅), which serves farmhouse dishes.

The Great Wall at Mutianyu is a restored Great Wall section with fewer crowds, the most impressive scenery, and convenient cable car service. This section is about 2.2 kilometers long, with the steepest section part (at nearly 70 degrees) close to the end.

GOOD TO KNOW

• On your return trip to the car park, besides the cable car service, you can take the slide way down to scream in the wind.
• There is a museum (China Dream Stones Museum) with more than 20,000 peculiarly-shaped stones at the foot of Mutianyu's Great Wall section. It is free to visit and worth a look.

The Scenery of the Summer Palace

Your Beijing discovery will continue with a visit to the Summer Palace and the Beijing Zoo.

The Summer Palace is the imperial court's summer retreat, still making a nice place to escape the heat of the summer. You can climb the hill or take a scroll in the charming decorated walkways, before your cruise in a dragon-shaped boat on Kunming Lake. DON’T MISS the glory paintings on the long corridor.

Beijing Zoo offers an opportunity of watching the giant pandas when Chengdu is not on your itinerary. Built in 1906, Beijing Zoo is the largest zoo in China, housing more than 500 types of animals, including the giant pandas and other endangered animals in China. Your guide will escort you and introduce you the endangered animals.

Lunch is at Xibei Restaurant, a restaurant serving dishes popular in Northwestern China.

Two hours before your boarding time, sit back and relax as your private driver and guide get you to the airport on time. They will take you right to check-in and say goodbye at the security gate.