Last full day in Qingdao

We just returned from a lovely dinner and are unwinding for the night. Since yesterday was a food-challenged day for us, John researched restaurants online to find some with English menus and more than seafood (we are in a port city so there is fish widely available but John doesn't eat fish). The more diverse restaurants are not in the area near our hotel. Tonight we hunted down the supposedly only German restaurant in town. With the German heritage / history of Qingdao, we wanted to experience that too. Our taxi driver had to make calls to find the location and I could tell he was getting nervous about finding the address - John had found it on our map so we knew we were close. Monnemer Eck (restaurant name - not in my German vocabulary!) is the real German deal. German accents & conversations and spatzle galore, although the spatzle was long like spaghetti. Tasty food and a fun, friendly atmosphere with regulars coming in (Guten Tag! Gunther!!). It was a bit confusing sitting in a German restaurant while in China with English Christmas carols coming through the sound speakers. The music played in shops and public places vary from current Chinese music & lyrics, Chinese music with a bit of English lyrics thrown in here & there, 70's USA love songs, and Christmas carols in English.

This morning we headed out to May 4th Square (named for the May 4th movement of national protest that started in Qingdao) since it is near the naval activities and on the shoreline. The plaza has a large red sculpture "May the Wind" in a fiery red color and spiral shape of the wind. Many people were out enjoying the weather and gathering around any wandering sailors from other countries. With the 60th anniversary of the Chinese navy celebration bringing in vessels and navys from around the world, we weren't the only foreigners around. Anyone not native was attracting crowds and requests for group photos so some people I don't know have photos of me with their friends / family members. Weird but whatever. We saw the Olympic Sailing Center and walked along the coastline. We haven't been able to find a schedule of naval celebration activities and we didn't see any today - the big parade and sampan (oar boat) race are tomorrow. Of course, we leave tomorrow morning.
After a nice lunch (another place John found online), we went to Beer Street to tour Tsingtao Brewery. Unfortunately the brewery was closed today and will open tomorrow (of course). Here is a very disappointed John in front of the brewery.

We walked down Beer Street which is basically wall to wall bars with kegs all wanting you to come into their establishment for beer.

We wandered down the street and found Beer Square. All the benches are the in the shape of the word BEER; there is a sculpture of beer cans; the back side is a large bookcase display of beer cans & bottles; large walk-through kegs and beer cans. Funny, especially with the people in oversized, cutesy animal costumes. All the man-hole covers are decorated with animals holding beer.

The sign declaring the area "The birthplace of beer culture" cracked me up - the brewery opened in Qingdao in 1903 and beer had been brewed around the world way before that.Tomorrow we are taking the train from Qingdao to Beijing. John is excited since we are on a D train route (there is also L, K, and Z trains) which is using the new high speed train. Our trip should take just under 6 hours - it was a 10 hour ride before the new trains. We paid the extra US$10 to sit in "soft seat" [First Class] which has reserved seats and more space.