A very impressive new development that has converted the old Royal Mail sorting office into stylish shops (Hugo Boss, Harvey Nichols, Bang & Olufsen, etc.) and restaurants.

While we didn't actually buy anything, the development is worth visiting as a precursor to going to Broad Street. I'd recommend getting a cab to the Mailbox and then walk through to Broad Street. Once you've left the restaurant fronts, the walk across the canals to the Gas Street Basin is actually quite scenic and well worth the effort. For those less inclined by the bright lights of Broad Street, I can strongly recommend the Tap & Spile, which is a traditional-style pub overlooking the basin. However, if a good knees-up is more your thing, walk straight past the Tap & Spile and hit the 'strip' that is Broad Street. Apparently it's gone a bit downmarket since I was a student there, when the bars were all posh and quite hard to get into. It's more like Magaluf now, I hear.

In terms of the restaurants in the Mailbox, we had lunch in the Shogun Noodle Bar which was pretty run-of-the-mill. Think Wagamama's and Yo Sushi combined.

Opened in December 2000, this is Britain’s largest mixed use building and it owes its name to the fact that it was built on the former site of Birmingham’s main postal sorting office. It offers a variety of shops and restaurants as well as leisure facilities, residential and office space and two hotels!

The fashion choices on offer include such famous designer brands as DKNY, Emporio Armani, and Hugo Boss, as well as such local boutiques as Ronit Zilka, Thomas Pink, and Tim Little. The lifestyle options range from the Aga Shop and the Iron Bed Company to that doyen of lifestyle shopping, Harvey Nichols.

Food options are equally as varied and include sushi from Shogun, pizza at Zizzi, fine dinning in Paris, and you can even try new Mexican cuisine (whatever that is) at Santa Fe; for the really adventurous, there is the curiously named Denial, which specializes in the worryingly-named modern British cuisine (good luck)!

If all this activity is starting to wear you out, you can pamper yourself with a haircut at Toni & Guy’s, a massage at Malmaison Spa, or a full beauty treatment at Obsession Salon; if you really can’t bear to leave, why not take a room at the Days Inn or a suite at Malmaison?

Clearly, all this must be a big draw for those high living media types as the BBC is to close its hallowed Pebble Mill studios and move its West Midlands operations here; there will even be a discovery centre so the curious can find out what exactly the corporation does with all that license fee money you keep paying them.

Set in a beautifully restored canal basin, the Mailbox provides an excellent brake from the trials of city centre shopping and it is well worth breaking for lunch here if you have the money.