Around The World...

On Wednesday afternoon we went into Manhattan to have a mooch around China Town, in our mooching we went from China Town into Little Italy - it happened to be San Serrano Day (or something like that) and there was a bit of a street party going on. There were lots of little food stalls and gift stands and a lot of the restaurants had stalls, there were bouncy castles and shooting alleys (and bizarrely a couple of freak show tents). Abi almost got a free ride on a rollercoaster flight simulator because of her hair! (I think the man was actually saying that he loved my hair)...
Walking down the streets felt just like being in another country (Italy I suppose!) all the restaurants had their seats spilling out onto the streets and were all inviting you in. We decided to stop at one of them for a glass of wine and a little smackeral, we thought we'd have our starter in Italy and then go onto to China for our main course. So we had some delicious mussels and some shrimps coated in pesto and wrapped in priscuitio ham... Mmmmmmmmmmmm!

China Town's fantastic - full of different kinds of shops, lots of fish mongers, Chinese Medicine shops, tacky gift shops, takeaways, supermarkets... it's great. We saw lots of huge and fascinating looking fish in the different mongers, we bought some chinese sweets in the supermarkets (they sold Malteasers too!) and we thought about buying a Terrapin to rescue it from the cramped little tub it was being kept in. We were also rather taken with the Pig necklace in the middle of the photo above - complete with 8 little piglets! Very tasteful.

We decided that instead of China, we'd go to Japan for our next course - so we went to an old favourite Wild Ginger up on 51st Street, right next to the Pod hotel where we stayed when Abi was working here. Abi has got a wee bit addicted to their duck fajitas (3 times in 1 week last time!), so we went and shared some of those.

On our way up to the restaurant there was a singer in Union Square station - she was Anne, a big mama with a even bigger voice, she was incredible. She was sweating a lot and at first she seemed to just be sitting and singing, but then when she put Billie Jean on she sprung into life, so did the audience that was growing around her. She got up and was dancing, and the crowd were clapping and singing a long and then a middle aged man just came out of the crowd and started moonwalking! It was fantastic - I'd never seen such a happy crowd stand and watch a performer in the station before, it was absolutely brilliant.