"Everybody says 'Good Morning' in Harlem because it's true! And that's lovely."- Marcia Gay Harden

The emptiest I've ever
seen Grand Central 

Today was a day where I woke up very early, it was my first time doing a walking tour in quite a while! (I feel like I haven't done very many in the last little while) and I started by day off by eating, playing a bit with the puppy dog and then I headed out.

I looked at google maps and it told me to take the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square but because it was one of those places where I'd have to swipe my card, I didn't want to pay twice to take the metro (considering it is about a 5 minute walk) and I walked out and walked over there myself.

Unfortunately, I took the wrong train...(Well the right one kind of) because the train I was actually looking for was the express, but I took the local, which stopped everywhere at like every stop. Thank god, I was able to get off the
train and get on another one which was express up the Harlem. 

When I got off the train, I actually ran into the exact person I needed, who was taking the tour with me! Talk about good timing. 

The mural outside the hospital 

We started off the tour in front of the Harlem public library across the street from the hospital. 

We walked around just a few blocks, but in those few blocks, we learned a lot. 

The first thing was saw was the gigantic mural on the hospital, it was one of Sammy David Jr. He was born in Harlem and one of the first ever Black men to perform solo. 

We kept walking and stopped by a beautiful church where we learned about
the differences between Negro Spiritual and Gospel music. 

New York had a campaign
to plant 1 million trees

Gospel music is music that is sung in churches to spread the word of the Lord, whereas Negro Spiritual music was a sneaky underground way to warn runaway slaves. It was all part of the underground railroad. 

Now back during this time, it was illegal for two slaves to speak without white Illegal to congregate or worship without a white person around - the white slave owners were afraid of an uprising or death. All the lyrics in the music would be laced with meaning. The songs could mean anything from a meeting tonight or as soon as full moon.The song "Wade in the water" was a warning. The song meant that the other slaves knew of someone's arrival in the underground
railroad and that there were dogs chasing their scent. So to get rid of the scent, they had to "wade" in the water by the river bank. 

One of the beautiful
churches in Harlem,

We reached a corner where there used to be the renaissance ball room, which used to be a really cool ball room, but was torn down a few years ago and is now being built as "affordable housing." 

Where is affordable housing you may ask?

It is two people making "$84,000" and above. Yes. $84G. How ridiculous is that? They take the medium income of what people in New York State makes. 

Yeah,

"Affordable Housing"
and what used
to be a ballroom.

New York has a lot of poor and homeless people, but they have a heck of a lot of rich people too. 

Don't worry though - 10% of the building will be for the poor - those making $45 grand or less a year. People wonder why there are so many homeless people.

Harlem wasn't always like this though, a scary, shady, dark area. Back in the 1700s, Hamilton actually lived in Harlem, and it was a place for the rich! That's why the sidewalks were so wide! Franklin Roosevelt even purchased everything north and East of Central park. The wealthy would go to Harlem like it was their Hamptons, there were sunny summer homes with huge sidewalks. Stanford White, the person who designed the arch in Washington were no cars or electricity). However, because Harlem was actually too expensive for a while, many homes were vacant for quite a while.

One of Historically
black schools

Square Park, loved beaux art and French Renaissance, so he designed many of the buildings in Harlem to look just as beautiful and big. People would actually ride uptown in a horse and buggy about three hours to get to Harlem (since there

In 1892, Ellis Island opened up as a federal immigration system and thus started the clash of East and West immigrants. The wealthy would go downtown for an opera or a ballet and the poor would be there, asking for money. 

So the wealthy went uptown. 

Of course, running away, this will solve all the problems and the poor will disappear right?

Anyway. 

Graffiti to bring
awareness to breast
cancer

To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U.S., Lincoln pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Congress passed it by the necessary two-thirds vote on January 31, 1865, and it was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. Now, every baby could learn to read and white, including black babies. When they came of age, they'd go to a Historically Black Colleges and University and went on to become doctors, lawyers or engineers. Now that they had money, they started moving up to Harlem and buying up the real estate. Unfortunately, the mortgage doubled...but these black groups paid it in cash. 

One of the streets, "Strives Road" was meant to teach the importance of recycling the black dollar. When you needed a dentist, you went to a black dentist. When you needed an Obgyn, you went to a black Obgyn. The money stayed in the community, it never went out and they thrived. One of the best examples of this was "Black Wall Street" during the early 20
th century. That is until the Tulsa race riot of 1921, in which white residents massacred black residents and, in just a few hours, razed the neighbourhood. You can look at Www.beforetheydied.com to learn about some of the people killed.

Great indie book store

We took a bit of a break at a coffee shop and I went into my bag and found a bag of jerky (yes, welcome to Wendy) and talked to the lady for a little bit. It's interesting, I found out from her that if I ever want to be a tour guide, I have to be able to pass a state exam and be licensed. Something I've never heard of before, but I think it's a good idea so that a bunch of weird random people do not come about and try to lead tourists astray. It makes me feel better.

We passed by these apartment buildings and we learned the story of Robert Smalls.

Now, back in the day, black people were not allowed to fight in wars - let alone black slaves. 

So Smalls was one of eight slaves on a portion of a steamer's crew. During a stopover along the South Carolina coast, the three white crewmen failed to follow the procedure to remain on board at all times and decided to leave the slaves on the boat and dock on land. 

Our tour guide outside
Bille Holiday's bar

Smalls took his wife, some slaves and the boat. He piloted it past five confederate ships, Smalls flew all the correct flags requesting safe passage through Confederate waters. Entering Union territory, Smalls surrendered Planter to the Union’s USS Onward. Smalls also gave Union forces Confederate signal codes and maps showing underwater mine placement. The value of the ship and its cargo was $30,000. Later, Smalls met with Pres. Abraham Lincoln. The pilot told Lincoln that black soldiers “will be better fighters than whites” because the blacks will be “fighting for their freedom.

He became the Union navy’s first black ship captain in 1863, ultimately fighting in 17 battles. Smalls returned to Beaufort after the war and entered politics, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for four years and, later, the South Carolina state senate.

Apartments for the Black soldiers

It was interesting as these houses held the 269 regiment. They built these houses because they did not want the black soldiers living with the white soldiers. 

Unfortunately, the black soldiers were also very badly trained. Because they were not trusted with
guns, they trained with broomsticks and mop handles. However, they were so successful that they actually did not lose when they fought the Germans. They were called "hell fighters." 

These veterans were not invited to the veterans parade so they ended up doing their own parade. 

We even got to go
through a really cool
fire station

The YMCA in the area is also super cool. During the Spring break, because of the issue of children drowning, the YMCA will teach kids how to swim. The line is insane. It is also Bill Clinton's designated gym! 

We also passed by a small jazz bar (a real jazz bar) where Billie Holiday. After auditioning as a dancer, without even looking up, they said "next" and then she asked if she could sing. She did and at the end of the tune she got 150$ in tips for a job that paid $18 a week. This was in Swing Street, during the Harlem renaissance. 

The hotel

There were restaurants and bars here where you could find a lot of music. But they had to be careful because they were scared of cops, so at one of the clubs, people were to knock three times and then cough a specific way. The cough changed every night so they had to know if they wanted to get in. 

We walked by a food place called "Sylvia's" which is known as the best comfort place in New York to grab food. Comfort food is not from the West indies, Africa, or anywhere else. It is from America. It is slavery food. And as a slave, you took home only the undesirable foods, so the gizzards, the thighs, grits, whatever. 

We walked by some more places, and we stopped in a Square where we saw the Waldorf Astoria of Harlem, which was called Ebb place, it was the place for parties and everything. It was, as the young people say, lit up. 

Apollo Theatre

We ended the tour by going to the Apollo theatre which was originally a burlesque house but is now a theatre, where Ella Fitzgerald got her start and first started skiddled daddled."
doing the "

After the tour, my friend and I went over to Sylvia's where we grabbed some real comfort food. I ordered the chicken and waffles with a nice homemade beer while she grabbed some catfish and grits. 

Both were delicious. Oh my god, they were done beautifully and well. Fried to a golden crisp without the soggy-ness and the waffles were delicious. Crunchy, soft, fluffy and they let me douse it in syrup *heaven,*

We started walking back over to the metro and visited a sexual education fair

The best place. 

where people were trying to promote safe sex. They were handing out a lot of condoms and other stuff... It was interesting to see. I was actually really happy that they even had an event like that there, it meant that the community knew and recognized that there was this issue going on and was trying to promote the prevention of both teen pregnancy and the spread of STIs. 

Afterwards, we headed over to this really cute bookstore that is run by volunteers and donations. This is one of the very few small independent stores that are truly independent because of what they believe in rather than it being the most trendy or popular thing there. I really respected them for that. I donated some money for a sticker and then was on my way.

SO GOOD, FRIED CHICKEN AND
WAFFLES

We headed into the metro where we entered into the train to go down to Williamsburg. Here we were just walking down the street when all of a sudden, we were given these free cookie/baguette sticks which were AMAZING. They were from the same company that gave me the box of cookies before. Before anyone says anything about how I always get free food all the time (I'm not denying this at all) I have to say, this company is promoting hard, spreading cheer and giving stuff out to people so that they can enjoy it. Michel et Augustin really believe in the idea of word of mouth and spreading the joy through people just simply enjoying and telling their friends.

Beautiful market

This is a company I can get behind. They have an open house on the first Thursday of every month so
I'm going to try my best to go and check it out and give them my support! 

We headed over to the Williamburg Bridge, where there was an Artists' market and a place where they were show casing all the art and differently foods that people in Brooklyn made and it was super cool! A lot of the artwork was beautiful and I really enjoyed
sampling all the foods around there!

HOW CUTE
ARE THESE
BOXES?!

When we finished up, we walked over to the grocery store where we grabbed some drinks and some food to hang out with later that evening. We headed back to her place in Williamsburg which has an amazing and beautiful view! 

We headed up to her rooftop to relax (I got to chill in the hammock and then again on the chairs by the edge) and read a book. When another friend came by to hang out, we all sat around and enjoyed the atmosphere and the fun! 

We were joined by another person and then we decided to grab some Chinese food take out, which was DELICIOUS and came in these tiny and cute little boxes and ate on the rooftop, talked and enjoyed each other's company.

All in all a good, enjoyable night.

"He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles..." - Woody Allen

The first stop was at this old school
bakery!

Today was a pretty great day. However, it started pretty early. My body isn't used to not waking up at 7:30 to get to work, so even though I set my alarm for 8:15... I still woke up around 7:30. And lied there. Doing nothing. Actually, that's not true, I did think about how this is what my life has come to. Waking up at 7:30 am every day.

I got up, had some breakfast and then headed down to where I needed to meet everyone for the tours. As I was walking, it was a beautiful day out and I was excited go on and about my down. I needed to be a bit down on 6th street so I stayed on 6th and kept walking. After a little while, about 20 minutes of walking, I looked up.

These are vault lights that used to light
up the basements before there was
electricity

I was on 5th. Apparently I had been walking down 5th for a while and had no idea how I even got there. HOW DOES THIS EVEN 

HAPPEN. I was walking down 6th! And I didn't even take any turns!

How cool is the graffiti here? Some
businesses actually love having this
graffiti on their wall because it amps
up their business and gives them street cred

Well I finally got to where I needed to meet in the park, Spring St. and 6th Ave and there was already a crowd there. Fortunately, the tour guide wasn't there. Unfortunately, neither were my friends. But when they did get there, I ended up accidentally turning just me into 5 extra people. Whoops. But I mean, better publicity right? 

Our tour guide, Jon, started off by giving us a bit of the history of New York, including the dutch originally owning it, the British taking it, etc. It was all interesting history. One of the newer things that I learned was that SoHo actually means south of Houston, NoHo is North of Houston! They do this to a lot of things! Like

It's actually a diagram
of the MTA done well
only problem is that it's
facing the wrong way

Tribeca is actually triangle below Canal street. How cool is that (I am kind of sad that these small things are mostly what I remember haha)?

As we walked through the neighbourhoods, I realized that this was the first time I had actually had friends on the tour with me. It was quite nice actually having someone to go up to and make little comments or gush or enjoy, or just in general whatever with. And when I had more or extra information, I could still talk to others and tell them all about it. It was actually quite nice to have the company. 

As we walked through, some of our first stops included the apartments and art galleries of the area. SoHo was originally a very industrial part of town, which is why so many places have such high ceilings - they were all factories. Quite

a few of the factories actually are now art galleries or apartments (Insanely expensive apartments, you do not want one here). 

Made of solid iron. And they have to
have railings that are updated cosntantly

We dropped by a bakery, called Vesuvio Bakery. It was a very old-school bakery with a very vintage exterior. There were lots of people inside and the cookies that were freshly baked outside looked delicious as well. This is one of the oldest bakeries in New York with old rare coal ovens. They began producing Italian bread and biscuits in 1920. Unfortunately, it is now a law that people are not allowed to bake using coal ovens anymore. There is now a new owner of the store, and it was agreed that they would only allow the new owners have the store if they kept the window front.

We also saw that they had a "green B" sign. So I found out that the New York city health board gives out letters to restaurants. As I was told, green B's are "okay" but not somewhere where you should eat. "Blue As" are where you really want to eat. And you'll always know when and what the status of the restaurants are because everyone must legally put the signs out on their windows or at least

This picture does no justice to how
beautiful the stone carvings are.

somewhere that is visible. And it MUST be visible. 

We kept walking down the street and actually found some really cool street artwork, and it was real legit artwork. It was a kind of map of the New York MTA map on the floor. It was pretty cool. There were also a bunch of glass almost "bulbs" on the floor, called vault lights so that people who lived in the basement would have natural light. Pretty cool eh? I found out that they are also in parts of Europe as well.

The original police headquarters but it
is now apartments (expensive ones)

Many of the sidewalks in New York are hollow. Scathing past flung open hatch doors on a crowded sidewalk, to avoid falling down into kitchen areas and storage basements, is a common obstacle for New Yorkers. In many of the older buildings the basements extend beyond the building’s footprint- opening up to a “vault” space under the sidewalk. As urban industry grew, the sidewalk shape morphed to adapt to the needs of the urban streetscape. In 1845, Thaddeus Hyatt patented “vault lights”, fitted clear glass lenses set within cast-iron panels embedded into the sidewalk surface in front of building storefronts (source).

While walking through, we stopped to look at the streets in front of us. They were made of pure cast iron. So a lot of them, if you bring a magnet, will stick right to the building! They stopped making the

Apparently an AMAZING dessert place
with some really awesome quotes outside

buildings out of wood because they were on fire and brick was just too expensive. On top of that, I also found out that every residential building actually needs to have a fire escape (you know, because of the fires and stuff). It is actually illegal not to have a fire escape in front of a residential building unless the building is commercial or it has been grandfathered in. Cool facts.

Afterwards, we kept walking down the street and found this building with this beautiful hand carved stone roofs. It was gorgeous. The only problem was that people had graffitied the sides of the building and actually made it look kind of ugly. It was horrendous just because it was just such a nice building that people worked for years on. It was interesting hearing about the reason why there are so many high rises. People would buy their land

Difference between
park and playgrounds

and build right to the edge of the lot (which I explained before happens because they wanted as much plot land as possible. That's why they have the grates outside and in front of the stores, so that they could get shipping and other stuff into the building [they had no alleyways and very little backyard]). 

Cute pixel art everywhere

The reason why was that "people don't get charged for building up." So people would buy the land, build a commercial store and then build apartments up so that they could rent it out and make more money. There is, however, one building on Wall Street that is very low, owned by a very rich man, JP Morgan. Now people asked him why he didn't build up and have apartments and in his humble way, he said that "he didn't need the money." #LifeGoals. 

We ended up walking into Little Italy afterwards and checked out all the graffiti in the area. We first passed by a nice playground with only kids. I found out that

Forgot to take a picture
of the sign but the fire
hydrant was pretty baller

in New York, it is actually illegal to be in a public playground without any kids. So if I wanted to buy some food and go to the playground, I wouldn't be allowed to sit because I wouldn't have any kids with me. Interesting.

We walked by the original police station which was in SoHo and we were told about how there used to be a hardcore rivalry between the Irish Catholics who were chosen to be police officers and the Protestant English... So they made their own police office. It was cool.  

Around that area, we also found the apartment that Heath Ledger passed away...It was interesting because I looked up at the building and saw a bunch of acorns and oak leaves (Throwback to another blog post where I talked to you about Vanderbilt and his rowboat turning into his big huge corporation).

Lombardi's original pizza. It was
packed when we went at 3pm.

We headed over to Little Italy, which I found out was actually devastated by the 9/11 plane crashed.

Because the area depended so much on tourism, it greatly diminished and is now only a few roads. Chinatown has really encroached on it now because it isn't dependent on tourists, rather it is dependent on mostly on other Chinese and Asian populations. So Chinatown did really well.

We started out with looking at Lombardi's Pizza, which is the BEST pizza place in all of New York. It was actually the original pizza place in all of the USA. It was originally comfort food and in Italy, they only really ate it as peasant food. They also don't make any pizza slices, they will sell only as a pie, so go hungry or go with friends. Joe's pizza, the other popular

Ferrara's dessert

place, was trained by Lombardi's. After a meal at Lombardi's, you can head over to Ferrara's bakery where they have the BEST (as I was told) Italian baked goods. 

Around the city, there's some really cool pixel art all around. Afterwards, we

kept walking down the street, found the Mulberry street bar and found out that THAT was where Frank Sinatra used to play! It's still very old school with the original interiors. It was beautiful. 

Where Sinatra used to
play, also legit angry
Italian ladies will yell 

I found out that Chinatown and Little Italy were actually originally a German area. Very German. The tour guide explained that immigrants would come to America, try to make their lives better and then move on. So the area changed hands. To show us a bit of what was leftover, we were shown this Catholic church

(from the German era) that was now Chinese and had sermons in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. How cool is that?

Got these bad boys
for $2. 

Afterwards, he suggested two of the best restaurants to eat Chinese food. The first was Hop Kee and Wo Hop which are both on Mott street. For one of them, you should go downstairs instead of upstairs because it's cheaper downstairs and it's mainly for the locals. On top of that, we went down another street that lead to the main park where I found a store that sold 5 dumplings for 1.25. How well priced is that?! 

The German chuch in Chinatown

We walked through the park, where people were playing majong, chess and gambling. Police don't care about it because it's petty crime but it was pretty cool to see. We ended off the tour and our group of people split off, since some

of us wanted to go to the market and others wanted to go back to Lombardi's pizza. The girls and I headed over back to the dumpling place where I asked for 5 dumplings, gave them $2, got 8 dumplings, no change and yelled at frantically in mandarin. Protip. Always have exact change.

We headed over to the Essex street market afterwards where they were having a big block party with food outside in the front of the market. It was actually quite nice

Inside the market! And there was a
block party outside

and reminded me of St. lawrence market in Toronto. It was quite nice and big. We ended up getting some food there, I grabbed some arancini balls, one with pesto, pizza and nutella, found a place by the Williamsburg bridge to sit down and enjoyed our meal. 

Gotta say - it was pretty delicious. They were freshly fried and still

hot. We sat down there for a whileand just people watched. 

Arancini balls in a cool egg carton

Afterwards, we headed back to SoHo and we went window shopping. It was interesting seeing so many things that I could not afford. Like damn. We went into a few stores called "Second Time Again" where I got to find out how poorly educated I am on the ways of fashion and brand names. I found out I am indeed very bad at it. There were clothes there which were literally thousands of dollars. Like more than my rent for a month. I didn't cry but I hurt just looked at them. AND THEY WERE USED TOO. Apparently some of those clothes were also clothes that models and movie stars had worn before. 

When we were finished window shopping, we left the area and two of us ended up going to the BEST grocery store ever. We discovered TRADER JOE'S.

Now. Imagine the best ever grocery stores, reasonable prices (not so low that you question the quality) with delicious hipster whole food quality produce and goods. And free samples.

The block party

This is Trader Joe's. I love it. Oh my god, I grabbed so many delicious things, such as a spinach and kale (I hate kale but I loved this) greek yogurt dip, some corn chips, dark chocolate and peanut butter cups, frozen orange chicken, GERMAN WURST (produced in Germany), pork dumplings, gah, JUST SO MANY THINGS, I BOUGHT SO MANY THINGS, ONLY FOOD. AND MY BILL CAME OUT TO LESS THAN $40. IN NEW YORK. LIKE HOW DOES THIS EVEN HAPPEN ANYWHERE?! 

My dinner, appies and dessert

Yes I am freaking out but i don't feel too giulty about it because it's totally worth it. Guys, Trade Joe's did not pay me to say all this. I just feel this way. I just know that it is amazing. Even though it's kind

of far from my place, I will go and do my groceries there EVERY WEEK so that I can buy as many fresh and delicious groceries as possible. Seriously. It was amazing.

Afterwards, I headed back home and just relaxed, watched some Malcolm in the Middle and vegeated. Had some leftover chicken for dinner, some chips n' dip and some peanut butter cups for dessert.

Worth it. Good day. 

Group photos!

“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline." - Ayn Rand

Did you know, it was
actually mostly empty
when it first opened
and right before it
declared bankruptcy,
King Kong came
out? Within
6 months, the
officers were filled. 

I love New York. I am in love with this city. The glamour, the glitz, the work, the atmosphere, the poor, the culture - everything. It's got this really amazing culture and vibe. People are busy, need to get places (hence everyone crossing red lights non-stop, even especially on big roads) but no matter what, they still stop to ask if you're okay, if you're lost or if you need help. It's exactly the city I want to be in and the city I need to be in. It's busy, works hard, plays hard and won't take any shit from anyone. People play by their own rules, and people persevere to get ahead. You can see it in their eyes and the strut of their walk.

Busy streets!

It is completely and utterly wonderful to walk beside them and to experience not one person - not one tour guide - tried to approach me or talk to me. Apparently I can blend in quite well (thanks, Toronto).

this feeling of being so insignificant yet so confident at the same time. Insignificant because I am just one of almost 8 million people in this city but confident because I've made it this far as one. In fact, while walking through all the tourist destinations and areas,

Like, how do I not get fat?

Today was my first day of being able to really walk around and take in the sights. I woke up early because I guess I was just so excited for the day.  Like, 6 am excited. I was supposed to spend the day walking around and getting to see downtown. And that's exactly what I did. Around 12, after eating some lunch, I grabbed my ankle brace (in a previous photo people made fun of me and said I was only wearing one sock, that was actually my ankle brace), threw on a coat and got walking.

Beautiful view of Broadway

I started by walking down Fifth, taking in the sights, enjoying the cloudly but warm weather and just breathing in the city. It was busy. I swear to God I have never seen so many cars run red lights, so many people walk right in front of cars on their green lights and everyone just completely disregarded the rules. It was interesting, after being used to the city and integrating into the culture of crossing red lights, I thought it was silly that people were standing at a red light. Well, didn't take me long to integrate.

This is how they park their cars?!

As I was walking down Fifth, I was overcome with the amount of skyscrapers and high risers in the city. The sheer amount of skyscrapers really blew me away! I walked by the Empire State building and the line up was insane, so glad I wasn't going up. I also walked by so many pizza stores that were only $1 and $0.99 a slice. God I'm going to have high cholesterol. 

Place for everyone to just sit in the
middle of two streets!

Again. Thank god I'm Canadian, right?

I was honestly just wandering through the city and saw so many wonderful things, small boutiques, independently owned restaurants, mini cafes, everything really. And really cute places to sit outside and eat! One of the great things about New York is that there are so many public places to sit, relax and enjoy, like Madison Square park! Where I just walked by and saw kids having fun, couples 

How busy is this market?!

enjoying each other and dogs running around in the dog park! It was amazing and just so nice to see in the middle of the city. 

Well. Some things don't differ
too much from Canada.

As I kept walking down Broadway, I ran into another Park, Union Square Park and it was just completely amazingly wonderful. I ran into an outdoor market. They had everything, ostrich sausage, duck sausage, LAMB sausage (you can tell where I went), fresh cheeses, fresh veggies, flowers, alcohol, pretty much everything. I loved it. I enjoyed and basked in the fresh goodness and the livelihood of everyone and enjoyed it so much!! However... I accidentally walked into a protest.. a cannabis protest. It was... interesting to say the least. Lots of cops (Who apparently all carry semi-automatics?!?!), lots of people.. Apparently the concert and protest happen every year. I didn't find a need to stay, so I

So big, so packed. 

headed out. I kept walking downtown and ran into a few more protests. I then ended up finding this really cool exhibition in Astoria place and checked it out! It was this really cool creative outdoor exhibition. Loved seeing it. 

These older folks were hanging out.
Playing majong?

I then kept walking down and found the Chinatown! It is huge. Holy crap. I cannot believe how much bigger it is than the one in Toronto. It is like 3 times the size of the one on Spadina. It was amazing to see it and I hope I can go back and grab something to eat from there one day! Around it were so many parks and basketball/

Supreme Court is huge.

 soccer fields where I saw a bunch of kids, teens, parents and toddlers playing. It was just great to see them. After that, I headed over to the US Supreme Court, which is this really cool and imposing building. It was huge. I gotta say, it is definitely a beautiful place to see. I sat for a bit and just enjoyed the city and the sounds of the city. . It was so nice to see people out and about, exercising and doing so many different things.

Beautiful well kept park. 

World Trade Buidling

Just down the street, I walked down and saw City Hall! ... And ran into another protest (this one was mothers against gun violence). I walked through the park in front of City Hall (Yes, there was a park and it was beautiful to see). I also got a quick look at the Brooklyn bridge, which was huge and really cool (and where the protestors were actually marching from). I kept marching on past St. Paul's church (which has a huge cemetery, I noticed that all the churches

People placed roses
beside many of the names.

have cemeteries in them?) and spotted the new World Trade Center area. I went by there and noticed that all the tour guides completely skipped over me and kept talking to other people... (Am I a New Yorker now?) I walked by and got to see the new building that was erected as well as the two gigantic pools of

water and memorials that were set up in the place of the original Twin towers.

The memorials were huge. 

It was very sobering to see the names of people etched in and the deep puddles that were in the ground. It was also extremely busy with so many people there. Also a lot of cops and security. And I mean a lot.

Afterwards, I kept marching down. I actually found Wall Street and walked down it, it was very small and very busy with a lot of people. I hung out a bit at Federal hall where there was a huge exhibit going on and I went in to see. Turns out

Standing beside a piece of history!  

it was also the place where Washington was first inaugurated as the first president of the United States! How cool is that?! I also saw the NYSX but who cares about that, really. 

On the ferry over to Staten island!

I kept heading down since my end goal was to head over to Staten Island. Again the tour guys completely by-passed me and went for other people. The line up to get onto the ferry was big. It was pack and I mean PACKED. Wow I felt like a sardine. And it

Close enough. 

isn't even high tourist season yet!! I sat down on the Ferry and watched as I went by the statue of liberty. It is a really cool statue! And I always think it's so funny that it's seen as such an "American symbol" even though it was gifted by the french...When I got off, there wasn't much on Staten island to see and I was super hungry so I grabbed my FIRST NEW YORK PRETZEL and ran into the 

It was ok I guess. 

ferry back to the city. Man was my view gorgeous. I also ended up listening in on tour guide's conversation and listened in on some of the history. Like, did you know that the Brooklyn bridge, about 5 km long, had to take into account the shape of the earth? Crazy facts. 

I was a bit tired (Had been walking since 12pm, it was about 5 at that point) so I started walking back uptown since I had booked a ghost tour for 7:30. I stopped by a Starbucks to rest up and bought my first AMERICAN FRAPPICINO!!! (I gotta be American now). I sat there and

Beautiful, the weather cleared up.

tooled around for a bit before I headed out again to Washington Square park. I saw a lot of NYU kids and buildings  (in NYU territory) before I got to the park.

Some guy playing some music.

Let me just say. Best, and favourite park ever so far. Oh my god, I walked in and there was a guy just playing on a piano.  It was beautiful, he was playing a lot of classical music and there was some girl who was dancing along with it. People were sitting and enjoying the music. I sat down for a bit and enjoyed the music as well. I then walked around the park, saw so many buskers, musicians, people just hanging out in general, people practising guitar, buskers and even people street dancing (Although they were broken up by park cops, yes park cops. Everyone was mad at them). It was quite a sight to see.

Some of the weird "art" that I walked into

Afterwards, I met up with a tour group, Free Tours by Foot, New York to do a "haunted tour of New York" It was pretty spectacular. I really do recommend it. I learned a lot of stuff! For example, many of the New York parks are actually built on cemeteries and dead bodies! They even found some recently. They were put there because back in the day, it was farm land and people were dying from plague and other diseases and because they did not want to bury people near the water (don't want to contaminate it!), they would bury them in what was farmland! How crazy is that to think 

This is what the Disney Symbol
was modelled after!

The tour was about 2 hours and I got to see a lot of cool things, such as a small hidden cemetery, a guy blasting music from a disability bus, lots of bars with these cool front cellars for people to go in and out, I got to explore the West Village where they filmed Friends, see some speakeasies, oh man, just see a lot of really cool stuff, including a place with a small courtyard! (It was beautiful, very European style). I learned a lot too.

Federal Hall

of. That so many places are built like that. Wow. I found out a lot more fun facts about where people were murdered, how there were hangings and what houses I should never ever live in because they're "interesting." Actually, speaking about hangings, which are done on Sundays were very much a 'family' oriented activity, where they would bring picnics, I was told that families would bring everyone and they would all sit around and watch. Is this where the term hanging out comes from? Who knows.

Where money goes to die

After the tour, it was time to head home, so I walked up from the village and while wandering, I found a bunch more places with $1 pizza. While going into one of the places and ordering a pizza, a small man went in, and he seemed ... like not the richest person - by far, and had some construction clothes on. He didn't seem to speak English well and so the guy at the counter switched into Spanish, called him "Friend" and tried to make him feel as welcome, safe and comfortable as possible by encouraging talking. It was actually really nice to see that. They must see hundreds of people who can't speak English, and the fact that the restaurant owners switched into Spanish to try to make people who may not speak English feel more comfortable really resonated with me and made me really happy.

All in all, a really great, long and tiring day. Almost 10 hours of walking! Tomorrow, even more!