Roadtrip to NYC: Manhattan Day 5
No more intermittent rain or threats of rain today. It decided to rain all day for a change.
Decided to finish off wandering southern Manhattan today instead of heading north to mid-town; SoHo, Little Italy, and Chinatown were the targets of brief walk-throughs.
SoHo is immediately south of NYU, and looks like a pretty neat place to wander around and look for fashionable things. Far more interesting for those of us without large clothing budgets is the traditional ironwork architecture there. At least I thought so-- although I was not in the mood to deal with the occasional outdoor vendors that I could afford to shop at, so maybe that colored my perspective. Some of the shops were conventional stuff I was familiar with from Melrose and Century City and other places in Los Angeles, others were the truly unique local places.
Little Italy was where I wandered next on the way to Chinatown; they actually had some of the streets there closed off for a celebration of some sort. The smells from the restaurants were wonderful, although my limited wandering didn't reveal too much more. It was a straight shot down to Canal Street and the northern border of Chinatown, which was open to traffic and much more chaotic. Restaurants and markets mixed with bakeries and other things, the main difference here was that this was far larger than any other Chinatown I had been in. Again it only got a brief walkthrough, but the dan tat from a large bakery on the corner were delicious, not to mention severely taxing of my toddler-level Cantonese. (lern-goh dan tat?) All the while, rain continued to fall. A small park at one end of Chinatown looked a little run down and was fenced in, I never did figure out what park it was.
Met up with Eileen to go see Avenue Q in the evening. Took a MTA bus marked "Subway" which took us from Union Square right to Times Square. Short walk to Golden Theatre, then we were there!
Avenue Q is half humans, half muppets for main characters, complete with muppet porn in one of the early scenes. We were dying with laughter!!! Our poor childhood memories!!! Seeing a musical with clearly adult themes and concepts is familiar, but muppets and adult themes was more than we had bargained for-- it was hilarious and painful at the same time-- those childhood memories shuddered in horror!! **grins** Throw in lots of New York landmarks and dreams about teaching, life, and the internet... it was definitely worth watching. =D We even managed to eat those dan tats after the show started, too. Yum.
Dinner afterwards was falafel and kebap for $4.50 each. Cheap and tasty-- can't go wrong, particularly not while watching people walk by on the street-- New York is definitely a busy place.
In comparison to Ann's apartment, Eileen's apartment is in a much more vintage NYC building. Kitchen and living room were actually semi-decent in size, but the rest was tiny. The lack of carpet or any proper flooring was a bit of a shock, it appeared that the wood subfloor was exposed and merely coated with paint. Not quite what I was expecting given the exhorbitant rents in NYC...
Then, off to bed for everyone since work awaited in the morning. Vacation ended as soon as the morning arrived, gak!
