China, Italy, Korea, & Midtown

Today we decided to go into the city and take our pre-recorded walking tour of Chinatown. The tour started at 89 Canal Street. I had decided to leave the apartment in a 3 quarter length sleeve polo with jeans. I didn't fully assess how the weather would be in the city and had a very "New York" experience. While standing at our starting point the head was unbearable. And with a suggestion from Becky, I changed clothes in the street! (Nothing X-rated, just removed the polo and was left with my tank top). We walked through a lot of parts of Chinatown tourists wouldn't normally travel to or from. The tour was really indepth about different parts of a very old part of New York. Some of the places we were instructed to enter had had different owners in the past and in Chinatown, everything keeps changing and evolving. Except for the buildings have stayed the same but what occupies the interior keeps changing. There was one street that was lined with barber shops and the guide on the tour explained that in the back of each barber shop had a gambling room and so if the person getting the hair cut was lucky, it would be a free cut, but if that person had very bad luck, it would probably be the most expensive cut of their life.

Out tour ended and we decided to head over to Little Italy to check out the Cheese Festival. Low and behold a FIFA World Cup (2006) game was being televised on every TV located in every store, bar and restaurant. it was the italy versus US game. so the pride of both nations were very visible for all. Flags were strung from buildings to buildings across the street, blocked off for the festival. We strolled through the crowds of people, stopped into some shops to check out the merchandise, and then stopped for a cocktail before heading back to Chinatown for Dim Sum. I've been told that it's an experience I should have while I'm here in the city.

We had walked back to a shopping mall where Becky knew of a restaurant which had Dim sum but when we arrived, we had just missed the cut off time, 4:30pm was when they stopped serving. maybe another day for Dim Sum. Since our really late lunch/dinner plans had been fizzled we decided to get back on the subway and headed back towards Midtown. We got off at 42nd street and then we found ourselves in Little Korea. becky remembered a place for some good Korean food and then all of a sudden we stumbled upon it...well after Becky looked at both restaurants and decided that the one on the left, Han Ban, was the one she'd been to before(there were two Korean restaurants side by side of each other). I had Becky take a picture of my meal, but then she made the picture look as though I had eated several small dishes all by myself. But really, we both did the same amount of damage to our meals.

After filling our guts, we left happy and ready to burst a button. We walked a few more avenues and quite a few streets and arrived at our next destination. Best Buy...to get some "Best buy" sort of things. After Buest Buy, it was onto H&M. I ended up getting a fun tube top...I probably have one for every day of the week...final conclusion...I LOVE them! While we were waiting for the subway, there was a man with a guitar...singing very off key and doing really bad renditions of semi-popular songs. Anyway, after quite a long day we headed home for the evening.