Private Cultural Day Tour: Hutong Rickshaw Ride, Tian'anmen Square, Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven
Overview
This amazing classic city tour of Beijing that includes both visiting the most popular attractions and also some small historic alleys. You will start your day from walking around the Tian'anmen Square, heading to Forbidden City, riding on a rickshaw to Hutong and end up your day by going to Temple of Heaven. Hotel transfer and entrance tickets are all included. You can choose different Language.
Inclusions
- Professional guide
- Private car and driver
- Hotel pickup and drop-off
- Lunch in a local Chinese restaurant
- Hutong rickshaw ride
- Entrance Tickets to the Sights
- Entry/Admission - Shichahai station
- Entry/Admission - Temple of Heaven
- Entry/Admission - Forbidden City-The Palace Museum
What to expect
Itinerary
This is a typical itinerary for this product
Stop At: Tiananmen Square (Tiananmen Guangchang), West Changan Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing 100006 China
After picking you up from your centrally located hotel in Beijing around 8:30am, you will start your day trip by visiting Tian'anmen Square, the world’s largest public square. Explore the sites around the square with opportunities to take some amazing pictures. Then, venture northward to the Tian’anmen Rostrum guarded by the enormous and portrait of Mao for all to see and what has universally been photographed all over the world.
Duration: 30 minutes
Stop At: Forbidden City-The Palace Museum, No.4 Jingshanqian Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing 100009 China
Next, heading to the magnificent Forbidden City, the largest Imperial Palace in the world. You’ll spend a couple of hours wandering around this amazing example of Imperial architecture and learning about the history of the palace. The whole morning tour will be around 2 hours.
Duration: 2 hours
Stop At: Temple of Heaven, Tiantan Road, Dongcheng District, Beijing 100050 China
After lunch, you will visit the classic and historic Hutong alleys by riding a rickshaw. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods.
At the end, you will visit Temple of Heaven, it is an imperial complex of religious buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing.
After your classic city tour, your tour guide will send you back to your hotel in Beijing.
Duration: 2 hours
Stop At: Shichahai station, Shichahai, Xicheng District, Beijing, China, 100009
After Lunch at the local Chinese restaurant then you will take the ride drive to the hutong (old residential area) where the transport change into a delightful rickshaw! The 30 minute rickshaw tour stops at a local family where our special guests get insight into the home settings, life, and culture of traditional Beijingers.
Duration: 45 minutes
This is a typical itinerary for this product
Stop At: Tiananmen Square (Tiananmen Guangchang), West Changan Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing 100006 China
After picking you up from your centrally located hotel in Beijing around 8:30am, you will start your day trip by visiting Tian'anmen Square, the world’s largest public square. Explore the sites around the square with opportunities to take some amazing pictures. Then, venture northward to the Tian’anmen Rostrum guarded by the enormous and portrait of Mao for all to see and what has universally been photographed all over the world.
Duration: 30 minutes
Stop At: Forbidden City-The Palace Museum, No.4 Jingshanqian Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing 100009 China
Next, heading to the magnificent Forbidden City, the largest Imperial Palace in the world. You’ll spend a couple of hours wandering around this amazing example of Imperial architecture and learning about the history of the palace. The whole morning tour will be around 2 hours.
Duration: 2 hours
Stop At: Temple of Heaven, Tiantan Road, Dongcheng District, Beijing 100050 China
After lunch, you will visit the classic and historic Hutong alleys by riding a rickshaw. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods.
At the end, you will visit Temple of Heaven, it is an imperial complex of religious buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing.
After your classic city tour, your tour guide will send you back to your hotel in Beijing.
Duration: 2 hours
Stop At: Shichahai station, Shichahai, Xicheng District, Beijing, China, 100009
After Lunch at the local Chinese restaurant then you will take the ride drive to the hutong (old residential area) where the transport change into a delightful rickshaw! The 30 minute rickshaw tour stops at a local family where our special guests get insight into the home settings, life, and culture of traditional Beijingers.
Duration: 45 minutes
Additional information
- Not wheelchair accessible
- Please wear comfortable shoes
- Operates in all weather conditions, please dress appropriately
- Please provide your hotel address for picking up
- Please make sure to provide your passport number and name for entrance Forbidden City tickets purchase in advance
- If you prefer to have different language tour guide than English one, please kindly make your booking with request 3 days advance
- Travelers should have a moderate physical fitness level
- This is a private tour/activity. Only your group will participate
- Confirmation will be received at time of booking
Ticket delivery
You can present either a paper or an electronic voucher for this activity.
Cancellation
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours in advance of the start time of the experience.
243filipaf
September 2023
This was our second tour with Catherine Lu Tours. Catherine organized our tours very professionally and promptly. Excellent service, everything went smoothly and efficiently. Both tours were absolutely amazing. Jenna our guide was brilliant and very knowledgeable, we learnt so much about Chin...
This was our second tour with Catherine Lu Tours. Catherine organized our tours very professionally and promptly. Excellent service, everything went smoothly and efficiently. Both tours were absolutely amazing. Jenna our guide was brilliant and very knowledgeable, we learnt so much about Chinese culture and history. We really loved spending the 2 days with her. Great private transportation too! Very good drivers! Lunch both days included and incredibly delicious, we got to try traditional food from Beijing which we truly enjoyed. We loved everything about our two tours and will definitely be using Catherine Lu tours for our future trips to China. Highly recommended!2Kmommy
July 2019
Sophie is a great tour guide. Our son was a little disappointed that the wait for Hutong ride was 2 hours so Sophie improvised with a tour of the bell tower. Sophie helped us order a delicious lunch. She also explained the sites and took of our family. We really appreciated that! We booked th...
Sophie is a great tour guide. Our son was a little disappointed that the wait for Hutong ride was 2 hours so Sophie improvised with a tour of the bell tower. Sophie helped us order a delicious lunch. She also explained the sites and took of our family. We really appreciated that! We booked three tours with Catherine Lu and Sophie was our guide for all 3 tours. She is awesome! Our kids still talk about her.jasmin3_l
June 2019
This is my second trip to Beijing using Catherine Lu tours and my tour guide, Stephen. Stephen is knowledgeable in Chinese history and was able to provide us with good insight on our places of visit. He also has a good command of English and conversing with him was a breeze. He also ensured that ...
This is my second trip to Beijing using Catherine Lu tours and my tour guide, Stephen. Stephen is knowledgeable in Chinese history and was able to provide us with good insight on our places of visit. He also has a good command of English and conversing with him was a breeze. He also ensured that the trip progressed smoothly and overall it was a pleasant and enjoyable experience .kbrein
March 2019
Our group of nine adults and teens had a fantastic day touring Beijing with Sonia. Booking with Jenna and Catherine was so easy—they replied promptly and were very customer oriented and helpful. Sonia is funny and knowledgeable. We all loved her. We would definitely recommend Catherine Lu tours a...
Our group of nine adults and teens had a fantastic day touring Beijing with Sonia. Booking with Jenna and Catherine was so easy—they replied promptly and were very customer oriented and helpful. Sonia is funny and knowledgeable. We all loved her. We would definitely recommend Catherine Lu tours and our guide Sonia.BostonRedSoxFan2004
September 2016
When we started to plan a one-week trip to Beijing, we looked around at a lot of tour agencies to see what types of guided trips they offered in Beijing to the Great Wall and Forbidden City. We did an awful lot of research on Trip Advisor to compare each so that we could maximize our time while ...
When we started to plan a one-week trip to Beijing, we looked around at a lot of tour agencies to see what types of guided trips they offered in Beijing to the Great Wall and Forbidden City. We did an awful lot of research on Trip Advisor to compare each so that we could maximize our time while minimize costs. We compared lots of tour agencies to see what they had to offer for an overall package, finally zeroing in on Catherine Lu because of what she offered and her overall prices. Since she is currently rated #1 for private guide trips in Beijing, so being a loyal Trip Advisor traveler, we gave her a try and were “extremely” pleased with her services. From the outset, every time we sent an email to her, she “always” responded within a few hours, answering each question and providing recommendations that we never thought of. No other guide service that we have used during the last 8 years of international travel provided the same level of service. She was clearly in a class by herself. A few months before the trip, we narrowed down two days of guided trips that we wanted to take during an 8-day stay in Beijing. They included a trip to Mutianyu section of the Great Wall (a bit further from Beijing than the Badaling section, but will less people), Ming Tombs followed by a Kung Fu show. The second day consisted of Tian’anmen Square, Forbidden City, Hutong and Temple of Heaven. We paid for everything by PayPal before the trip, which was nice so that we didn’t have to do it during the trip. Also included in the price was a car with driver, guide, lunch each day at a local Chinese restaurant, and entrance fees to each sight. We exchanged over 12 e-mail to iron out specifics into exactly what we wanted. In each case, she was extremely accommodating and provided follow-up costs & itineraries. Doing a private tour, versus a bus tour where you are just one of 50 people, affords the opportunity to tailor each day around what you want to see, thereby maximizing one’s time and effort. If you can afford it, taking a tour such as this is the only way to go to high value sites. We were told Catherine Lu has 15 private guides working for her. The guide she provided us for the two day’s we used her services was named Cindy. We found Cindy to be extremely knowledgeable about the sites we visited, providing historical context and answering questions. She also took pictures of us whenever asked, which for us is a big deal because it helped document everything for future reference. The pictures she took at the Great Wall were fantastic because it was a beautiful day, sunny with very few people there, which doesn’t happen all the time. We can honestly say we got some awesome pictures because of Cindy, not only at the Wall, but at every other venue. The restaurants she took us to for lunch served great local Chinese food, with reasonable prices. We also changed our schedule throughout the day to maximize what we wanted to see; Cindy was very accommodating and was able to incorporate these changes on the fly. Our drive, Mr. Liu didn’t speak English, but the van he drove was very clean, comfortable and he provided water for our use at all times. The trip to the Forbidden City went smoothly too. To get into the Forbidden City, you have to get into a long line and provide a passport. However with Catherine Lu, we provided all the necessary passport information by e-mail beforehand, so when it came time for the tour we literally walked by all the ticket lines into the compound. Cindy then took us around the top sites inside the Forbidden City in a very logical manner. The same went for all the other sites she took us to which included taking a 15 minute bicycle rickshaw ride through a hutong, which was an experience by itself. Then for the Kung Fu show, she got some great tickets to an event that lasted about 75 minutes, and was an enjoyment to see. All I knew about Kung Fu was from the Disney movie Kung Fu Panda or Bruce Lee, but this was much better and with class. The show combined traditional Chinese arts with modern dance, providing a must-see for visitors and Kung Fu enthusiasts. We absolutely loved the show and would recommend it to anyone wanting to get more culture about Chinese society. The actors did amazing acrobatics that was a joy to watch. Let me say everything Catherine Lu and Cindy recommended was top notch, well thought out, and exceeded expectations. Going to China to see the Great Wall has always been a top bucket list item. Getting a good guide service after spending lots of money to get there plus hotel was a big priority. That is why we were very happy to find Catherine Lu since she is totally customer oriented. Responding the numerous e-mail with requests, she set up a two day itinerary that couldn’t be surpassed. Providing a talented and knowledgeable guide in Cindy, plus a good driver, they delivered some of the very best tours that we have taken in 8 years of extensive international travel. Take my advice, secure her services should you be in Beijing with the intent of seeing the top sites with ease. You won’t go wrong.Kerryn B
July 2018
This is the best tour experience we have ever had. John, our tour guide had perfect english, was very friendly, knowledgeable and responsive to the needs of my two kids (age 8 and 11) who asked some unusual questions! He ensured that the day ran at our pace (it was a private tour) and pointed out...
This is the best tour experience we have ever had. John, our tour guide had perfect english, was very friendly, knowledgeable and responsive to the needs of my two kids (age 8 and 11) who asked some unusual questions! He ensured that the day ran at our pace (it was a private tour) and pointed out lots of interesting things that were not in the guide books. The day ran very smoothly because of the good coordination with the driver (air conditioned vehicle was great!) including a really nice lunch at a nice restaurant suitable for kids. My kids loved the rickshaw tour. I am very happy that Catherine Lu tours was recommend to me and highly recommend John and Catherine Lu tours to others. Thanks John!