Huge and serene, a green oasis with pure fresh air free of honking vehicles and pollution, far from the madding crowd. Walk leisurely among the trees and lakes or take a tram. Stop for a leg rest and enjoy free short musical performances and puppet shows. Go just before dusk to see the Garden transform from daylight tranquility to a lit-up magical paradise as night falls. Be mesmerized by the sashaying musical fountains as you make your way out...

Our guide, Michael was very knowledgeable and spoke good English. Our driver (sorry didn’t get his name) drive us safely around. Started off by visiting City Wall. Requires steep climbing! From the top you get nice views of the city. Interesting history to understand the thinking of how the walls and the “Ramparts” were build as such (brilliant thinking to defend the city). This was then followed by Terra Cotta warriors. Be prepared for long, long walks. Upon arrival at the site, if you are lucky, you could meet the farmer who first touched the Terra Cotta warrior back in 1975. Buy a souvenir book and have his autograph and take pics with him. *Hint* - rest of the souvenirs in the shop can be purchased cheaper outside. Be prepared that by this time ~11am onwards it gets very, very hot. Stay hydrated. Toilets are easily available and relatively clean. Went for lunch and we requested for local noodles as this was Xi’an’s specialty. Although we requested Michael to order, please do add any other food in case you feel the local food may not be to your taste (but please don’t waste food). Post lunch, we visited the Big Pagoda, very interesting to learn about how Buddhism started in China. But by this time we were quite tired from the earlier walks and the heat was unbearable so we skipped some of the sightseeing in the temple grounds. Overall, we highly recommend this tour. Do also wear good walking shoes! It would have been better if the tour could have started earlier in the morning so that we could partially avoid the afternoon heat.

Some business colleagues and I did the Xiamen City tour last weekend with our guide Lim and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Lin was excellent, very knowledgeable about local culture and she did a great job of explaining everything in English. I would definitely do a tour with her again.