This holiday was called the Walls & Warriors which started off with a 6 day land tour arranged by Cruise 1st during Chinese Golden week! Followed by a 12 night cruise on the Ovation of the Seas.

We started our journey to Xian from Edinburgh via Frankfurt & Beijing on 1st October. After travelling for a very long time we were met at the airport by a guide from CBT holidays, arranged by Cruise 1st. There were 4 of us on the flight from Xian that arrived around 2.30pm, what we didn’t know was that we would have to wait until every other international flight arrived with all the guests before we could leave the airport & that wasn’t until around 5pm so not a great start but anyway we were on the way to the hotel until the guide informed us that we were getting taken for dinner first & not to our hotel but a buffet restaurant 40 mins drive away from the hotel which we stopped at briefly as 2 passengers demanded to be let off the bus.

We were taken to a restaurant in a lovely building but so were all of the 8 coaches so it was pandemonium. We eventually got back to the hotel about 9pm & then had to listen to the guide tell us about luggage, labels, passports all stuff we really didn’t want to hear as we were all shattered. We were only 2 nights in Xian before getting the bullet train to Beijing but we asked to take out some clothes & leave our suitcase out the following morning so that it could be taken to our Beijing Hotel by courier & not on Bullet train with us. This did not go down well as all we wanted to do was get some sleep before our 6.30am alarm call. Read more