Dilly-Dallying for Golden Week in Dalian

The plan for Dalian was simple: sit out Golden Week somewhere pleasant, hope for decent weather, do a bit of walking, and have a nice enough hotel to retreat to when the crowds got too much. We'd heard it called the Hong Kong of the North — full of parks, greenery, beaches, and a slower pace — and that sounded exactly right. It does feel different from anywhere else we'd been in China. The streets are wider, the city has these layered Russian and Japanese histories baked into its architecture, and there's a general sense that nobody here is in a particular hurry.

We wanted to get some coastal walking in so we headed for the Binhai Middle Road, a coastal route that runs along the edge of the city under brilliant blue skies. It's a wooden boardwalk the entire stretch — one of the longest in the world, apparently. Not exactly wild walking, then, and in parts it was quite busy (Golden Week, we should have known), but the views were lovely, the weather great so we weren't complaining. The first day we took a taxi to Fujiazhuang Park and walked along the board walk and at times a tarmac road to Tiger Beach where there was a convenient metro station. The second day we started in Haizhiyun Park and walked just a surprisingly tough 5km (really?!?) to the northern gate of Sea Charm Park.

The food was a genuine highlight. Sea urchin is a big deal in Dalian, and we found a brilliant spot where we ordered sea urchin dumplings — sweet, creamy, completely unforgettable — and immediately ordered a second round before we'd even finished the first. They came with a Chinese Riesling, our first taste of Chinese wine on this trip, which turned out to be a lovely thing. There were also some excellent Japanese restaurants knocking around, which made sense given the history. And then there was Half-Pretty, a craft beer bar run by a guy who brewed a few of his own beers and had, by his own admission, a full-blown obsession with Peaky Blinders. He served a cask bitter from Birmingham, wore a flat cap, and was thoroughly good company.

Dalian turned out to be exactly what we needed: a place where we could walk by the sea in the morning, eat something unforgettable at lunch, take a trip on an old tram and end the day talking beer with a stranger in a flat cap. What more could we want.