Shanghai Top 5 Highlights All Inclusive Private Day Tour

Ruby was the best! She really showed us a flavor for the city, it's history and surroundings...Great English, fun and entertaining, we would definitely ask for her again!

In October 2018 we were on a Viking cruise along the coast of China, starting at Beijing and ending at Hong Kong. We hired Catherine Lu tours for a two day tour of Shanghai since we had already arranged for a two day tour of Beijing with her company (reviewed in TripAdvisor for Beijing). We had two different tour guides for the first and second day, Kathy and Cecelia. The car and driver were the same. The first day we visited a Shanghai city park and a water village at Zhouzhang with Kathy. The city park (Fuxing Park) was fun since many retirees congregate there and dance, practice tai chi, etc. My wife danced with one of the retirees who may have been a retired dance instructor (he was that good). We then saw the French concession area, including a walk past the Communist Party of China birthplace in 1921. Next we visited the Little White House and spent maybe an hour wandering around its rooms and looking at some beautiful carvings made of various materials, including ivory, jade and wood. Then we drove to the water village and strolled around its narrow streets full of shops selling a variety of things, including food, artwork, handicrafts, etc. After a nice lunch overlooking a canal, we explored more of the village and shopped a bit. We had a very nice first day, and Kathy was an excellent guide, providing clear and interesting descriptions of the places we were visiting, helping select dishes for lunch, and answering our questions. The second day in Shanghai our guide was Cecelia. In the morning we visited the Longhua Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Shanghai, followed by a visit to Shanghai Tower, with beautiful views of the city and the waterfront (riverfront) area. In the afternoon we visited Yuyuan Garden and strolled around for an hour or two before returning to our ship for a 3 PM departure from Shanghai. Cecelia was very knowledgeable and explained the sites we were visiting very clearly. For a quick lunch Cecelia selected a very small restaurant/food stand that had excellent dumplings and also provided an experience of working people in Shanghai having lunch. All in all, I highly recommend Catherine Lu Tours, both in Shanghai and Beijing. The guides were uniformly excellent (all spoke English extremely well), the drivers were also very good, the itineraries are as varied as you wish and flexible, and the convenience and comfort of visiting sites in a private car/van is well worth the reasonable cost of the tours.

Our trip plans suddnely changed (nothing to do with Catherine Lu tours), so we ended up with a day and a half for sightseeing in Shanghai. We booked this all day tour, but were able to expand it to another half day plus airport transfers without any trouble. Ruby and the team at Catherine Lu tours were friendly, flexible, and spoke excellent english. Our guide, Ruby, knew all kinds of great information about Shanghai. We were picked up promptly after each stop, and Ruby knew just the right amount of time for us to be at each place. She is also a bit of a foodie, which made the meals she took us to extra special. She also was happy to take some photos of our group and promptly email them after the tour. I highly recommend Catherine Lu tours, especially if you get Ruby in Shanghai (or Steven in Beijing). We had never done a guided tour like this before, but it was definitely well worth it.