We were excited to set off with Audrie & Rachel Saturday morning to visit Chinatown. We made our first stop by the food truck for breakfast, although I didn't take pictures this day. No worries, we went back every other day so we were sure to try all of the varieties of sandwiches....they were amazing, the best $2 I've spent in a loong time! They live near Columbia University Medical Center, so that's where they're walking here.....
Although I did put the camera down for a short break when we were at their apartment for the most part, so I don't have many pictures from there, the girls had such a great time playing together, especially Kyla & Audrie. It was adorable, Audrie started calling Kyla "my best friend" instead of Kyla :) I had sent Audrie this shirt before we even thought about making the trip to NY; after all of that happened & we booked tickets I went back & got one in Kyla's size too. They were super excited to be twins! Poor Annie actually had RSV they found out while we were there, so she didn't get to go on any of our excursions.
So we saw this car driving on the sidewalk, which was kind of weird, and then saw it was trying to back into this garage. Samuel was impressed, I guess a Maserati costs more than our house or something.....we bought the girls lined mittens on a string in Chinatown first thing, it was cooooold this morning, and they worked perfectly. They had cute little animal heads on them to the girls were waving at people with :)
So I'm almost afraid 'the people' are going to come after me for typing this or something, ha! But Rachel bought a purse, and after she bargained with the lady over the price & had the paid, the lady asked her if she wanted a brand on it. Rachel said sure, so she offered her a list of big brands. Rachel chose Coach, and the lady produced an emblem and got her little hardware toolkit out and started attaching it to the purse huddled over in the corner, ha! Pretty crazy. Chinatown itself was pretty crazy....lots of these little stands with people calling to you to come in and shop, plus there were tables set up on the other side of the sidewalk with people selling all kinds of random cheap stuff - sunglasses, belts, whatever. Add tons of people trying to walk inbetween, and it's pretty much mass chaos. A bit too much for me, it stressed me out a bit to try and shop especially in the more touristy area. I did buy a couple of cute scarves & a headwrap that was cute & kept me nice & warm, I wore it nonstop after that pretty much, and a cute crossbody purple purse (after Rachel encouraged me to not get black or brown that I asked her opinion on as my first 2 choices, telling me that it was boring & not very 'New York' as a souvenir....true, true, ha! And it is a nice shade of deep purple, super cute).
We bought the girls these Asian paper umbrellas & they carried them around. Adorable. It was the cutest thing ever, when we started getting into the really Asian part of Chinatown, Audrie looked up all excited & said "It's Mulan!" Chinese New Year is this next week, so lots of stuff for that was up.
Audrie wasn't such a fan of the live seafood, ha! Love the look on her face here....
These were some of the people set up on the sidewalks selling super cheap stuff. Cherries were 3 pounds for FIVE dollars! Crazy!! We bought a bag, of course. Raspberries were $1!
The wind was getting pretty crazy, and we were freezing after walking around outside for a couple of hours soaking in all the atmosphere, so I looked up in my book a place I had read about that was basically an Asian Department Store. Indoors being the keyword! It was on the outskirts of Chinatown, not the open air crazy part, so we headed that way.
It was perfect! Nice and warm, first of all, and they sold all kinds of neat stuff. Bob, Sue, Anna, & Amanda actually met us there, while Rachel & Audrie headed back for lunch & naps.
They had several groceries that I wanted to get, plus some souvenirs, AND I asked & found out that they shipped via UPS, standard rates, no extra charge, plus you didn't have to pay tax. So, Bob kindly took a little break & sat with my stuff while Kyla read in the Chinese Fairy Tales book she had chosen and I gathered up a few more things to stock up on. The box should arrive later this week, and I'm super excited! They have a website took, although it's not super slick or easy to navigate, but I'm glad to have somewhere I can order from again, it's been waaay too long since we've been able to have onigiri! Sue & the girls were shopping too......sad, but I just noticed that they had fabric by the yard as I was looking at this picture, there was too much to look at there, I didn't even notice while we were there.
Cheap house slippers, dried anchovies, all kinds of great things!
Kyla was so into the book that she read it in line while I paid :)
Love this one!!
We parted ways for lunch, since we couldn't find anything to eat that had anywhere to sit before we needed to go different directions. They headed to the American Museum of Natural History, where we were meeting another friend later, while we headed to a noodle shop for a big steaming hot bowl of noodles for lunch. Perfect for the cold windy day! It was kind of funny though, they sat everyone together at these cramped tables, we sat at a table for 6 with 3 other people, none of which were together either. But the Asian businessman next to us finally felt sorry for us because I could not get them to come take our order, and called out in Chinese to the waiter and pointed at us, not sure what he said, but a good paragraph, and he did say "order" and they finally did come take our order. I was just glad I wasn't the lady pushing the stroller that came into the restaurant, she was obviously a tourist, and had a huge stroller, there seriously was hardly even room for her & her family, definitely no room anywhere for a stroller it was so crazy cramped, the waiter chewed her out big time in Chinese, I'm glad I couldn't understand him. She didn't seem to care though, and kept pushing the stroller in......the man next to us was very solemn though, even when I smiled, to thank him. Kyla loved that he was slurping his noodles though, she thought it was very authentic, which it was :)
I'm not even sure if they had forks & spoons, we certainly weren't offered any, but she did a great job with the slippery noodles :)
After lunch, we walked a bit more, and stopped for Bubble Tea & red bean paste pastries. It makes me hungry looking at them right now, they were both so super great. Kyla was a bit apprehensive about the 'bubbles' (black huge tapioca pearls) in the drink, but as soon as she had one she loved them, of course. They're a little bit like a gummy candy or something, and she started seeing how many she could get in one 'slurp' up the straw. 3 was her record :)
She was a bit skeptical that the bean paste would be good either, but loved it also :)
The red bean paste inside...
'Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!" Live seafood, dead ducks & pigs (yes, those are pigs hanging inside of the back of that truck!)
I thought it was hilarous we saw 2 Popeyes restaurants in Chinatown....bottom right, as we walked we started running into art galleries...
This ornamental cabbagey stuff was in the nicest parts of town in their little center islands; I asked Bob & Sue about it, they said they use it too (Rachel & I thought it was strange) to get a little color in the winter. Definitely not an Arkansas thing :)
So, this was the on and only part of the trip that went poorly. And it was really only a couple of hours, and compared to the whole trip it's nothing & I can hardly complain, but in all fairness & honstly, since I'm writing about every single other last detail, here it goes. So I fell on the sidewalk. And not just a little fall, I got my feet tangled up in some plastic wrap that came off of a delivery truck, and fell hard....like I still have huge bruises & knots on both of my knees, one especially, and my left hand, and I somehow bashed my face on the sidewalk. Yes, my face. And my nose started bleeding, my top & bottom lip started bleeding.....not pretty. It seriously is pretty literally a miracle that by the time we met back up with everyone a couple of hours later I looked fine. And I'm not joking. And, somehow I didn't take Kyla down with me, although we were holding hands at the time, AND, my camera around my neck was fine. Here's the really sad part, as Rachel asked, if I instinctly protected the camera, I'm pretty sure I did, ha! The bruises on my hand aren't on the palm, they're along the curve from my pointer finger all the way down to my thumb because I grabbed the camera so the back of my hand took the fall, making my face hit the pavement. Nice. At least I'm a quick thinker? After it happened I kind of sat up and there was a lady & a man standing there both rushing over to see if I was okay, I said that I was, but that I needed to sit there for a minute, and the girl stood there the whole time just kind of watching to make sure I was okay until I got up and walked off with Kyla in a minute or two. Then, after we rounded the corner I had to stop again, I told Kyla I was okay, but sometimes when you skin your knee you cry for a second and I shed a tear or two and we kept on. I won't lie, my face and knees were throbbing pretty badly at this point, but we were trying to make an immigrant walking tour, so we had to hurry on, we were cutting it close already. Then we get there, and it's sold out. I could have bought tickets ahead of time, but it wasn't sold out the night before & I wasn't sure what time we wanted to go for sure, so hated to buy the tickets. That was one of the things Kyla was really wanting to do, so I was really disappointed at this point. THEN, I get to the subway station and the train just flat isn't running. And I cannot figure out how to get where we want to go. But I see a family, Mom & Dad with kids about Kyla's age, standing there on the platform trying to figure it out too, so we get to talking & figure out we're all trying to get to the same place on the other side of town, literally only 4 blocks way from each other. Crazy! So the Dad thinks he has it figured out, so we all follow him :) The Mom & I had been visiting, as had the kids amongst themselves at this point, and figured out that they had just moved here from California, and also homeschooled. Their kids are in a children's production here is why they moved here, and the daughter had flown back & forth from CA to audtion for Annie on Broadway, and is now in the top 30 left for the spot (!) so they decided to go ahead & move out here. Pretty crazy stuff. They were super, super nice though, and we ended up spending about 30 mintues together on the subway & stuff chatting; the Mom was really, really nice. I told Kyla about the kids being actors & stuff after we got off & she was shocked, she said that they seemed normal, she had couldn't believe they were actors & actresses, ha! So that was our turning point, and literally the only bad part of our whole day. By the time we got on a subway going the way we were going, my face was soooo much better too. I am still just beyond shocked I didn't have a broken nose or black eyes or something though.
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