dont go in the water

Enjoyed my time there.
People say it looks kinda like Europe due to the architecture..... that was definitely not true in my experience. There were normal "house" style buildings in the suburbs but that's hardly unique to Europe.

Anyway, I spent the majority of my time there sitting on a relatively quiet beach.

Annoying thing about people there: Would find quiet spot on the shore away from everyone else.....within an hour a group, couple or family would always come and sit RIGHT beside us despite there being about 100 yards of free space in either direction, usually within the shade of our parasol.

Would notice the odd Chinese couple sitting alone....a group would arrive and sit almost on top of them.
WTF people?

Anyway, we went in the off season so there wasn't much litter and it wasn't that crowded.
Water looked and seemed quite clean.
If you find a quiet beach it may be because the shark net is not in use.

Food was fine though I was expecting a larger variety of seafood to be on display all over the place.
Outdoor restaurants seem to encourage begging.
In a bizarre scene, none of the managers minded when a lady with a deformed face plonks a portable amp next to their customers and starts singing so loud they literally cant hear each other speak, this lady went down the road restaurant after restaurant, only leaving after numerous donations.

I don't mean to be cruel but if I could have paid her to leave straight away I would have.
Quite possible that street was a tourist trap and there are cooler places to eat.

Qingdao beer is nice

Yeah it's not good beer.

On draft it's tolerable, but never "good".

KZ is right, go to Shi Lao Ren beach. It's nice.

great fast train that takes you from beijing to qingdao in 5 hrs and connects to the subway (beijing south i think?) so very fangbian if you are going back and forth much. i think the reference to "european" comes from the curvy and slightly hilly roads and leafy avenues near the main beach and some of the architecture, quite different to flat and square beijing. beer festival is fun but something i'd probably only do once. i think there's one or two kind of laowai-ish bar streets with a few western restaurants, but quite small, if you're in to that.

It's "european" because it was briefly occupied by Germany some hundred years ago (hence the beer). Probably the best thing to ever happen to the city.
As far as I remember there's only one part of town that still has any german architecture (around the beer factory, of course), but a decent amount of it is still intact.

Qingdao..... like any other Soviet era black sea resort. Grotty!

Nice to visit, not to live. Take the taxi boat to Huangdao for the day. They have a great boardwalk along the beach that has tons of little restaurants with live seafood. Walk up and down and pick out what you want, they cook it fresh. Some even give out free tasters if you aren't sure. Cheapest seafood I've ever had in China!

This was the beach we spend time on.

It's possible to have a very relaxed trip there, depending on the crowd.

You said it brother. I went there a few years ago with a few friends. The first day we went to the beach there weren't many people so we could relax.

The next two days were terrible. The whole time we were at the beach people kept coming up and asking if they could practice English with us. If I went swimming I'd have people purposely running into me so they could say excuse me and try to start a conversation.

Oh god thats depressing.
And you feel like a prick if you tell them to f*** off so you have to either grin and bare it or just kind of ignore them.

Okay, just got back

+ Really nice beach a short ferry ride away, great waves.
+ Loads of seafood
+ Fresh air
+ Lots of cheap tat to buy
+ Decent coconuts
+ An art deco McD's
+ Funny little red 3 wheeler taxis, some with Ferrari badges

- Absolutely chokka with people on said beach
- Sharp pointed barbecue sticks/glass lurking everywhere in the sand
- Dirty city with uncollected food refuse bins, it really stinks
- Forget the naval museum, 60 rems and its a junkyard full of paint pealed old Russian rust buckets and rotting aircraft
- Really hideous attempts to recreate German architecture, Cathedrals not open.

Highlight - buses with "one world one ream" written down the side.

Nice city, beautiful and safe

so instead of the usual chinese people's 'beautiful city, delicious food, beautiful women...'
maybe someone can pay attention to real experiences, like maybe herbie's?
and im just gonna jump on that wagon and say,
qingdao is only pretty compared to uglier chinese cities.
if you could go anywhere else, you'd go there.
as we are in china and sometimes only have a weekend off, qingdao is fine for that.
that's all.
same goes for sanya and all that.
same goes for most places in china that are so relentlesy marketed as
some of the most beautiful places in the world.
they are not. the people are not. the food is not. the beaches are not.
they're just mediocre. at best. as most things are in this country.
i dont mean to insult. that's just my view. PLENTY of more beautiful EVERYTHING
outside of china.

to resume.
qingdao?
meh...

and i gotta say, as a profound beer snob,
selling beer in a f-ing bag is so disgustingly low class!
'oh, we have best beer in china! you want one bag? two bags?'
wtf!?
no. class. whatsoever.

yeah 9 village valley is pretty.
been there a couple times.
you know what sucks about it and why the rockies are still better?
you can't f-ing do anything in jiuzhaigou but look and move on!
places like that i like to sleep under those skies in the mountains
and wake up near the multicolored lakes.
instead you take a long walk, see everything and move on
back into your hotel room.
you know what im saying, right?

but yeah, huang long and jiuzhaigou, very pretty. hen-f-ing-haaaao!