The minimum fee required for send a tx in the new bitcoin core is 1'000 satoshi, I think with 1k as fee your bitcoin will be confirmed in less than 30 minutes (try and report here your test with the transaction id).
not always in 3 blocks when you are unlucky and sometimes it takes more than an hour to create a new block so i wouldn't generalize to 30 minbtw, you can send for free at bitfinex
