11 days of mayhem - day 4

The guys spent the first Wednesday of their trip shopping and looking around the Pudong area of Shanghai. I had to work again, so caught up with them at around 6pm after finishing a little early. I wanted to show them a big technology shopping centre (5 floors of electronic gadgets to peruse through) so we got on the subway and made our way to downtown Pudong.

Only to find that the centre closed at 7pm. Damn it! After a bit of aimless wandering around trying to work out what to have for dinner, I made the executive decision to take the guys to Xin Tian Di. I think I've mentioned this place in a previous blog post - if not, here's the description from Wikipedia:

Xin Tian Di is a car-free shopping, eating and entertainment area of Shanghai. It is composed of an area of restored traditional shikumen ("stone gate") houses on narrow alleys, a modern shopping mall with a cinema complex, and some adjoining houses which now serve as book stores, cafes and restaurants. Most of the cafes and restaurants feature both indoor and outdoor seatings. Xintiandi has an active nightlife on weekdays as well as weekends, though romantic settings are more common than loud music and dance places. Xintiandi means "New Heaven and Earth", and is considered one of the first lifestyle centers in China.

It's a pretty nice place, very popular with tourists and locals alike, and a good place to have a meal outside when the weather is nice, so we hopped into a taxi and got there in less than 20 minutes. We wandered up and down the strip trying to find a place that we were interested in. A couple of steak places caught our eye but the guys had decided they could get better, cheaper steak back in Aus. There were a few other Chinese restaurants but they were all packed, so we ended going to a German place where we could sit outside and watch the people go by. We also got to try some of the German beers which were delicous, though horrendously expensive (Xin Tian Di is one of the most expensive areas in Shanghai to get a meal). We finished up our meals and decided to go back to Pudong, but had got a taste for beer so we decided to find a place to keep drinking. Not many places to choose from in the Pudong area, so we went to the place that was closest to my apartment (and just happened to keep the German theme going) - the Pudong Hofbrauhaus.

The original Hofbrauhaus is a famous beer hall in Munich (which I went to way back in 2004). The one in Pudong is a multi-storey building, with a modern bar/dining area on the ground floor, a small-scale reproduction of an authentic German beer hall on the second floor, and an outdoor dining area on the third floor. The 2nd and 3rd floors were shut when we got there, so we just settled down at a table near the small three-member band (vainly trying to drum up interest from the crowd) and ordered up some locally-brewed beverages. Shotty decided to go with the 1-litre glass, while Cookie and I wisely chose the 500ml versions.

They were pretty tasty beers, and the waitress kept bringing over a dish of free peanuts, so we were content. We ended up staying there until the place was about to close (just near midnight) and got a taxi as we were too lazy to walk the whole 2km to get home. Was very happy I'd stayed away from the 1-litre beers when I woke up without a hangover the next day.