I had 30 hours in Beijing and since I had never been here before, I thought I would do a tour of the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. I booked with Tour-Beijing before I arrived. They were really great with emails and, true to their word, they left a message with the front desk that they would be picking me up at 7am. On the day of the tour they met me, on time, at my hotel and escorted me to a small mini-van. We picked up 6 other people and were on our way to the Great Wall. Once there, we were told we could not walk up, but had to take a cable car for an extra 80 RMB. I felt like we should have had an option, but I hadn't been on a one for awhile, so I opted in. Once on the wall we were given about an 1 1/2 hours to hike around. It was fun, albeit, very crowded and hot, so make sure you bring a lot of water! After the tour we headed to lunch, but had to stop at a jade factory first. Now, I knew these little "shopping" trips were scheduled, but it was already 2pm and we had had nothing to eat and were all starving. We did the mandatory tour and then were fed at a typical Chinese restaurant with surprisingly edible food, considering it catered to mass amounts of tourists. Next stop, the Summer Palace. This place was teeming with people and by now, it was really hot out. Our guide rushed us thru this beautiful place to the point that 2 members of the group decided to stay and make their own way back to the hotel. By the time we left the palace it was almost 5pm, so we thought we would be headed back to our hotels, but no, we had one more "shopping" trip to do. Our guide took us to a sad little pearl market where we had a boring lesson on pearls and were then told to look around. The prices were high and the whole thing depressing. As a group, we gathered outside and waited for our guide. When he didn't show up, we went to find him and saw him sitting in the market, smoking a cigarette and playing cards. We told him we wanted to return to our hotels and he said we had to stay at the market a total of 40 minutes and we had 20 minutes to wait. Well, we all got pretty heated, so he said he would call his "boss". Of course, he took about 15 minutes to do this, thus killing time and making us wait the prescribed 20 more minutes. We felt like prisoners. It was so ridiculous and annoying. If I were to do another tour, I would spend the money to hire a private driver.