We were staying in Geneva for a two or three weeks and we eventually took a sightseeing bus to the French alps one day. It was also horrible.

We had been travelling a bit forth and back to CERN, and we also relocated to a hotel on the French side of the border - crossing the border between France and Switzerland was no problem, it could be done by feet, by bike, by a regular city bus - there were never any checks of passports. But of course, this tourist bus was checked. The driver specifically asked every passenger joining: "do you have your passport with you?" and still we got stuck on the border with France for one hour because one of the passengers was without a passport.

Arriving to the destination at 14:00 and then having to leave for the return at 16:00 ... aaaargh ... that's so pointless! We took a cable car up in the mountains ... and arrived indoors in a building with lots of windows. I'm a hiker, I want to get out, walk around, enjoy the fresh air ... but as soon as I tried leaving the building my wife was yelling after me: "STOP! We don't have time for that!"

We also did join a sighseeing bus in Xi'an. I had messed it up a bit, we got surprised by heavy rain, checked the forecast, "where in China will there be no rain tomorrow? Xi'an, excellent, let's go there and have a look at the terracotta warriors!". I went to the hotel reception and got them to order tickets for us. Leave at four, arrive at nine, that sounded great. Only, at eight thirty in the morning we were still in the middle of the country side. The train was arriving at 21:00, not 09:00! So in the end we had quite short time in Xi'an, and we decided to join for a sightseeing trip to spend the time more efficiently. Right. We got onto the bus, and the first stop was a souvenir shop, we spent like more than an hour there. One thing though, we took the sighseeing together with some really old people from Australia. After two weeks on our own in China, it was such a wonderful experience to have some western people to talk with!