Encounter Garden Great Wall Holiday Guesthouse

Had so much to rave on about. Ended up writing 1000 words. Had to shorten! We share the sentiment of many previous guests that the only negative was having to leave. We stayed four nights. It was too short! We miss the place! This is a damn special guesthouse! Our first trip to China – a Beijing layover became a Great Wall trip. A central base made sense to see three sections. Enter Encounter Garden – absolutely the right choice. An authentic guesthouse experience surrounded by incredible nature. An idyllic place tucked away in heavenly lush mountains. Lack of public transport was not a barrier. Taxis were cheap and super reliable. Having relied entirely on past reviews, it was inevitable that we would arrive with VERY high expectations. But Encounter Garden team met them ALL – and more. Each person brought something special to making guests' stays comfortable, enjoyable and genuinely memorable. The snuggly older lady; her gentle husband. The kind Mr Driver. Two young ladies who can assist in English: Xiao Yi, who somehow makes better Italian pizza than some places in Europe AND makes proper "cafe" coffees that even high-standard Aussie coffee snobs would approve of; and Mu Zi, a kind and thoughtful problem-solver of all kinds, always professional and always there for us to make sure everything's in order. Finally, Jia Le, the sweetest chef we know, whose food we miss A LOT. Once we tasted his cooking and mum-the-pescatarian-vegetarian approved, the temptation to go try other restaurants became pretty small. We ate all four dinners there. Encounter Garden left in us that feeling, where if we were to turn up again tomorrow, it'd be like walking back into your favourite cafe-restaurant where you are a regular and everyone would be delighted to have you back.

That we had to leave. That our stay was too short. And that we'll have to always travel via Beijing - otherwise how else will we get to spend more time at Encounter Garden?

Family atmosphere, nature &supporting staff . We received the support with medicine shipment which was forgotten after our stay.

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As other reviews have said... Delicious food... Our best breakfast so far in China! Friendly, helpful people, lovely decor.

We liked everything but would want to say that the afternoon tea was disappointing. At just over £100 we expected an afternoon tea and I did look at all the photos of it...my fault as the photos did show very basic tiny packets of nibbles, all very sweet which we didnt eat. I thought this could have been some staged pics. The pizza we got tasted lovely but we only ate half as it wasnt cooked underneath so very doughy. I justified the price to myself because we saw bottles of wine in the pics and know its expensive.. Sadly we didnt get a bottle of wine. We did get a couple of glasses of home made wine which i loved but my husband didnt like it as he was expecting wine with his afternoon tea. None of this takes away from a score of 10. It was lovely sitting on the wall, and watching the sun set. It was good to be taken there and have it laid out for us. But the contents of the afternoon tea for the price was disappointing.

Very friendly staff and very understanding! Goes out of their way to assist as much as possible.. the staff makes the difference for the property.. and also the staff allowed to go experience things that you may never had encountered in life such as seeing plums grown on a tree, at the property and getting the chance to eat it directly from the tree (that made a difference)..

Nothing to highlight since they exceeded my expectation for the short duration that I was there