The tour for four American high school students and two teachers was set up over the internet so I was skeptical about the service or committing money as a deposit. However, every detail was taken care of perfectly from being met at the Xi’an north train station by a Chinese guide whose English was excellent and knowledge of the history of the Terra Cotta warrior museum was also good. We arrived at 8:30a.m. and were driven directly to the Warrior and Horse museum – which took an hour. The VERY unfortunate part of the trip had to do with the pollution which was thick as a dense fog obliterating all views along the way. Our group wore masks. Abby, our guide, described the pollution as “mist” caused by all the construction projects. Thankfully she knew more about the museum and its history and the history of the sights.By 12:30 our small group of high school students were finished with being awed at this historical sight and were hungry. We ate at the museum site where a man was slapping around noodles outside for “show”. The noodle soup with chunks of meat was perfect and inexpensive by U.S. standards at 20 yuan for a big bowl.Next we visited the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, a temple (working), a bell tower (not working) a drum tower (not working) and more shops. It was good for those who have never been to a temple site. Next time with limited time to use, we would probably skip it.Our final part of the one day was spent on Muslim Street – a truly unique eating experience. Our guide walked us up the center of the street and gave us a meeting time and place. We thoroughly enjoyed the differentness of Muslim Street. Such unique foods, breads, sweets – all for the sampling. Pomegranate juice was being squeezed; taffy like candy was being pounded by huge wooden mallets. It was a fascinating conclusion to our day. We could have spent more time here, but only had a couple of hours before being returned to the Xi’an train station in time to return to Zhengzhou.
The company and our guide delivered an excellent service all the way around. I would recommend them and would use them again myself on another trip to Xi’an.
In short, I think your company did an excellent job of getting us to and from various destinations. Abby knew plenty about the Terra Cotta Warriors and museum BUT tended to talk to the two adults and didn’t do much talking to the whole group to share the information. I would have preferred that all the information be shared with the group not just the person she was walking with at any given time.
Also too bad that while pointing out where the actual Tomb was that we didn’t drive by it. We couldn’t see if from the path the van took because of the thick pollution. I think it was an important oversight not to show us that.
Muslim Street was great – as I noted above. Next time I’ll have to plan for an additional day as many suggested!