We landed in Beijing on May 9th. Taxi to hotel was reasonable. We stayed at the Novotel Peace Hotel and it was nice, reasonably priced and near the Snack Street, Wangfujing and the Forbidden City.Where ever you stay find a small nearby store to buy bottled water, snacks and fruit. The hotel prices are not worth it.
Mao's mausoleum and the main building in the Forbidden City were closed for renovations -- but of course, still worth visiting. Frommers day 1 walking tour is great and the day 2,3 ones as well. The hotel door man will tell the taxi where to take you. I always carried my Frommers so I could point to destinations in it in Chinese. Every time the driver knew where to go.
We had the hotel buy Beijing Opera tickets and saw a condensed tourist version -- which is enough unless you are really into it!!
We took a taxi to the Drum and Bell towers, saw the drum beating performance and bargained for a rickshaw tour. It's ok but they go to fast and stop at a friends store and someones house etc. If you can walk the houtongs all the better.
The Old Beijing stree is good to see period buildings but expensive for shopping. For fun and to purchase novelties go to the Dirt Market on a Sat or Sunday. We found it fascinating and fun.----We are not shoppers so can't comment on that. Did not go to the silk market for example.
We did go to the Pearl Market and bought pearl's at Jane's on the 4th floor based on people's comments here and also found her honest and reasonable. Do a little research on Pearls prior to your trip to have some basic idea of quality.
We hired a taxi to go to Mutianyu Great Wall. Y450 and worth it. By the way, the hotel will add Y150 to the price for calling someone they know and trust for this.
We left at 8am and were the only people there when we arrived at about 10. It was 11 to noon before most of the tours started arriving.
Take the gondola up. It is a two hour walk to the other end and you pay another small fee to take the "chairlift" down. Well worth it!!!
Anything you buy there will be tourist priced so bargain hard or just skip it. They don't have anything you won't find elsewhere-- except maybe the " I climbed the Great Wall" t shirts.
If you are on a tight budget, don't hesitate to take the bus to this site. Others have posted info about that. We took busses a number of times in our journey and found them to be just fine. Buying the taxi and driver for the day gave us the ability to stop whereever we wanted including a local grocery store where we bought fruit and snacks at very reasonable prices because we were off the beaten track for tourists. We stopped for a late lunch in one town and the driver easily found a nice dumpling restaurant -- we were probably the only tourists who had ever been there. We had 40 dumplings ( think pot stickers) for 10Y or $1.30. That would have cost 4 times that in Beijing or more.
Not counting our arrival day (evening) we had 6 full days in Beijing and 5 nights. Took the Z train to Xian.Hotels will keep your luggage for you the day you check out so you can spend the day out and then return for your bags.
6 full days is about right unless you are rushed.Of course, in 6 days you only see the highlights.
We also stayed 3 nights at the Lusong Yuan-- courtyard hotel.It's ok but a little to rustic for us. Wife thought there was black mold in the bathroom. I'm not sure about that. We would not stay there again but it is quite reasonable in cost. It is in the hutongs and near the Ghost street -- restaurant street which is great!!
