“I can’t remember all the times I told myself to hold on to these moments as they pass.” - Counting Crows

Today was a day full of work and other stuff. We had meetings and I had lots of editing and other to do.

So buttery

The meeting ran very long and so by the end of it, I just needed a break and went for a nice long walk. Very long walk. I went all the way to Bryant park and saw so many people sitting, enjoying their lunches, listening to piano and I even saw a knitting club.

Seriously, Bryant Park is definitely my favourite park in New York.

I walked back to work and did a little bit of reframing and editing. Seriously, it was a pretty dead day at work. Nothing really important happened.

I headed out for my own personal networking meeting really quick and then ran back to work (crying while I ran because I was wearing heels).

As I was finishing up work at the end of the day, my boss came in and told us we were all leaving the UN to go for drinks...

..So we did.

Empire state <3

We headed over to a French restaurant up the street and it was quite lovely. We had sangria, escargot, Croque-monsieur, salmon and tuna tar tar, foie gras and it was simply delicious. It was to celebrate a co-worker's birthday as well as to have a happy belated 14th of July (Bastille day as we call it).

After the lovely dinner, I headed over to my friend's rooftop where we said goodbye to one of the longest staying interns here. It was beautiful as we talked and enjoyed with the background of the Empire State Building.

“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.” ― John Updike

Today I actually ended up waking early again but not as early as usual. The weather was still brutal (how can anyone deal with 30+ humidity weather for this long??) outside.

I ate a little bit of breakfast, watched one episode of Scrubs and then headed out.

I went for a walk (as usual) but this time I went north instead of my usual South. I headed up all the way to 78th street and on my way there, I walked through a gigantic streetfair on Broadway and found the theatre where Stephen Colbert films (I need to go back and live there. I need to be near this.)!

It was quite a nice walk - would have been nicer if it was cooler but it was nice nonetheless.

I walked into a few food markets as well, where people were selling organic foods/goods and there were so many people out there buying stuff.

Chess tournament

It was my first time walking around Upper West side and, man, is it nice. It's a very residential looking area, but not like the East, since there were many indie cafes and small restaurants. 

People were out with families and dogs... It would probably be a nice place to raise a family. 

I walked over to the Grand Bazaar, where it was in the playground of a school yard and there were vendors selling antique items both in and outside of the school as well as indie food and drink places. It had a really cool garage sale feel.

Haagen Daaz was actually there, giving out and promoting their brand with free ice cream (I swear all they do when I see them is give out free ice cream).

After my nice visit, I walked back down Broadway to meet up with my visitor and down the street,
there were many more stalls and trucks that went up.

One actually caught my attention quite quickly... and I had to grab it. 

I found the Late Night Show!

It was the Economist and they were also giving out free ice cream (This would be my fourth free ice cream of the last 36 hours) ... and free bugs.

Yes, bugs. On top of the ice cream as toppings! They had crickets, meal worms and other bugs that they topped off with.

I could see that everyone in the line was very apprehensive and kind of disgusted... but I was super excited. 

Whereas I could see other people brushing off their toppings, I asked for some of everything.

Ice cream - Does it bug you?

It was quite cool, the Economist had actually ran a story about the perks of eating bugs and how healthy and high they are in protein and how low they are in carbs. They also emit a lot less CO2 than it takes to make cows. They're probably one of the next best snacks there is - that is, if people can get over themselves and eat it. 

Honestly, it tasted like crunchy corn puffs. There was no flavour and it isn't bad for your body.

I walked down all the way to Hell's kitchen and we headed over to Hell's Kitchen Flea market. It was kind of smaller than I thought it would initially be and I felt really bad for the vendors who had to stand outside in the heat to sell their items. At a few points, I touched the jewellery and metal and they were selling and it was on fire-burning hot. I couldn't imagine sitting there all day, even with the onnings up.

It was indeed a vintage flea market, there were items and things everywhere being sold - from old army medals to jewellery, to African inspired art work.

It was quite nice.

Afterwards, we decided that we needed a bit of a break from sightseeing and we went shopping. Yes. I went shopping. I wasn't huge on it, but because she had seen that there were sales all over the city, she wanted to check it out. We headed over to a few stores where I made some work purchases (stuff for work - and only got 3 things) and surprisingly, I got pretty much almost 80% off some stuff. literally. For sale items were dropped down to a low price and then some stores were doing 30-60% off the lowest sale price.

I asked a sales associate about it because I had not seen stuff be sold for 60% off the lowest price and

I love food.

she told me that around 4th of July, a lot of stuff starts going on sale as they have to get rid of that season's clothes to make room for next season's. They sell stuff for as low as possible around this time and the only other time they bring up the discount that high is around Christmas time!

Good timing for me, damn. 

After a long day of walking around for stuff, we headed over to Baohaus, a Taiwanese place that sold Taiwanese buns and homemade taro fries. 

It was pretty delicious. 

Afterwards, because we were still hungry and because I felt like every person who ever visited New York should eat at Shakeshack.

So we headed over to the one in Madison Square Park, which didn't have too long a line up and sat down. 

I got a normal burger and it was delicious. Their fries were crispy and their burger was soft and good.

Baohaus baos

As we sat down, I was told more information about the area. Such as this: The Flatiron building was one of the first original skyscrapers! It was built in classic art deco style with beautiful carvings on the outside of the building. It was built as a triangle instead of a square so people were really scared that it would blow over. Silly 20th century people.

The building with the clock tower on the east side of the Flatiron building used to be decorated just as beautifully as the Flatiron. But then it went through renovation and they stripped the building of all the carvings and decoration. It was a travesty. The clock was actually built to be based off the church clock towers in Italy. The building used to be offices but now it was a building used as a hotel. On the top floor, where the windows and the roof is, people rent it out (and it's ridiculously expensive).

The building beside it was meant to be about twice the size as it was today. Unfortunately, as they were building it up, halfway through the construction... the stockmarket crashed. And they had to stop building. Whoops.

I also found out a bit more about the Rockefellers! 

So (and I am paraphrasing so bear with me), the original Rockefellers founded what is now known today as standard oil. Around the time that they founded this, they were using this oil for gas lamps... but you know what else was becoming popular? The modern automotive... which ran on? That's right, GAS! 

The Rockefellers made it big. They had a great product and great timing to go along with it. 

JD Rockefeller Junior was even better. He was a huge capitalist but a great philanthropist at the same time. During the building of 30 Rock, the depression hit, and instead of pulling his money out like everyone else did, from what I heard, he single handedly provided almost 75,000 jobs - even though his family estate had lost HALF their wealth. Insane.

He helped fuel the economy again.

Afterwards, we headed home and went straight to bed.

In the past, people were born royal. Nowadays, royalty comes from what you do." - Gianni Versace

Another Monday another start of the week. This Monday... marks exactly 18 days left of working at the UN. I cannot even believe how fast the time has gone by and I'm so glad that I have written so much of this down so that I can reflect on it.

I cannot believe how much I have already done. I am completely blown away. I feel like I've really worked hard on my projects here and I've also experienced almost all of New York city. It's been seriously amazing.

At work, I pondered a bit about the end of my internship and how I would feel (immense sadness, in case you were wondering) and worked a lot on more formatting (I am the word queen).

The queen looks beautiful. Trust.

At lunch, the Canadians and I went out to lunch again, this time joined by the French, American and Iraqi forces. It was quite fun, we sat, talked and laughed as we made new friends. My lunch was pretty boring - a wrap. I usually bring lunch almost every single day of the week since it is not only cheaper - but it is significantly healthier than the food I would be eating (coughdollarpizzacough) if I went out to buy stuff.

Though sometimes I'll grab soup, which is fairly healthy and not too expensive. I just try not to eat at the cafeterias here since they're all weigh by pound, which makes lunch pretty much cost $10 a day. That's about $50 a week simply for lunch. Could buy groceries instead (or 50 slices of pizza).

Afterwork, I headed down the stairs to the ECOSOC room where there was a meeting that was hosted by the Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG as we call it in 'UN lingo') of Children and Armed Conflict as well as the Kingdom of Belgium (I didn't know they were a Kingdom either!).

I sat there and listened to the panelists speak as well as a child soldier who gave us first-hand experience about his life as a child soldier. It was heartbreaking to hear.

Child soldiers are one of worst things out there - to completely strip a child of their innocence, their childhood and their education- that's just disgusting and horrendous. No one should ever be stripped of their own childhood. And no child should ever have to learn how to operate a gun or kill another person.

No child. Ever.

Of course, another person who felt very strongly about this was the Queen of Belgium herself, who was at the meeting!

I had the chance to shake her hand and take a very sneaky photo with her.

After work, I headed over to a co-worker's house for an Ifar dinner (for the end of Ramadan) to see everyone, drop by and say hi!

I had to leave as I had made prior plans before. I was cutting it really close, since I was by Upper Manhattan and had to run down to Chelsea so I JUST barely made the train after running and speed walking and headed down to Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre which is "An underground organization that tries to undermine society by spreading Chaos."

It was a pretty promising title. Since they did improv comedy and I do improv comedy... It was a perfect place for me to be!

The whole bar!

It was actually interesting because the whole improv troupe was actually girls! In fact, the whole night was female comedians. The whole place was so packed and I just BARELY made it to slip into line with some friends who were picking up tickets and I was lucky enough to get a seat.

The improv segment was okay - I wasn't super impressed but I enjoyed it. However, the act afterwards, which was when they were all doing a planned skit called "Balls deep," which was a series of sketch comedy acts with girls pretending to be guys was excellent. I don't think I've laughed harder in a really long time. I enjoyed it so much.

Afterwards, my friend and I headed out and grabbed some groceries from Trader Joe's, which, on a Monday night, was the MOST packed I had ever seen it. It was ridiculously insane. I could not believe how many people there were! But the line moved fast so it was all good.

Afterwards, I walked home, put my groceries away and put myself away into bed.

"It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all." - Laura Ingalls Wilder

I'm super cool.

Got into work today a tad bit late and I learned to never do that again. The line up to go through the metal detector (yes, as an intern, I still have to go through the metal detector) was really into the sidewalk and into the street. When I cut through the line (yes I am allowed to do that, I'm not trying to be a butt), the security officer actually stopped my friend and I. There was a big Conference on people with disabilities that day with a large contingent of people so I assume that that was why the line was so long (everyone was trying to get in at 9).

Lesson learned: Never go in after 9am again.

When I went upstairs, I started working on some of the writing and research for the big project I am working on. We had our weekly meeting where a lot of stuff was established and then afterwards, I got some free lunch, courtesy of Conference Services, where we had spicy chicken, rice and fish. It was delicious and hearty but I couldn't finish it all so I took some home. I stayed late a bit to work on my project since I wanted to get a head start on it after having a meeting with someone in another department. At around 5:30 I headed on my way home and dropped by the New York Mid-Manhattan Library, where I applied for an NYC ID Card. 

Why does the fake card have
the same name as me...

For those who do not know what that is, it is essentially an ID card, recognized in all 5 Boroughs ofNew York that signifies thatI am a New York resident and sometimes, I'll end up getting discounts and other perks for having one! I remember a little while ago, when I was at a market, they were giving out ticket to get $2 off whatever food tent you'd like just for being an NYC resident with the ID card. It was a good enticement - plus a great souvenir to take home.

When I got home, I heated up some leftover pizza and enjoyed it as I sat around, wrote some more yelp reviews (This is really turning into my life isn't it? But it's also nice just sitting there and giving my honest opinion about restaurants and other places to help other people out in the future) and caught up with the last two episodes of Game of Thrones.

Very simple, non-complicated uneventful day - something I needed. 

"Success is not a destination, but the road that you're on. Being successful means that you're working hard and walking your walk every day. You can only live your dream by working hard towards it. That's living your dream." - Marlon Wayans

FRIDAY! Finally - Friday. I woke up really early today again, at around 7 am and then thought it would be a good idea to go right back to sleep - but you know when you close your eyes for what you hope is 10 minutes but then it turns out to be an hour and a half? Yeah, that happened to me. I woke up and I needed to be at work for 9am, which isn't a problem usually since I live so close.

...But this morning I had to go and pick up some stuff for the office. I was a bit late - but not by much! Though that was with no help from Staples. I headed in, found the exact thing I needed within 2 minutes of being ni the store and then waited in line for twenty minutes.

HOW DOES STAPLES HAVE A TWENTY MINUTE LINE ON A FRIDAY MORNING AT 8:50AM?! How. I don't know. I guess they're super popular or not very quick with their stuff.

When I finally did get into work, it was pretty busy, our boss, the USG (Under Secretary General) was coming in today. We had a working lunch, so all the plans I made with my friends to go to the Green Fair at the UNICEF building all went down the drain.

But that was okay because I learned far more from the working lunch than I would have ever learned to a fair. I believe very strongly in learning first hand in learning through experience.

My Co-worker kindly
gave me this!! :D

if I went 

I tried to power through my other work because I really wanted it to be finished as soon as possible, but I was pulled away to help out with something else - the Secretary General's Report.

Yup. I, a lowly intern got to help out with editing and giving my opinion about the Secretary General's report.

Yeah.

YEAH.

MY MIND IS STILL BLOWN AWAY, I DON'T CARE THAT MY NAME  (No one else in my office's name will be on it either, only the SG will get his name on it) ISN'T GOING TO BE ON IT.

I KNOW I HELPED.

I KNOW I DID WELL.

I TRIED.

Mussels and Meatballs!

And man did I learn a lot. Just hearing about all the edits the report had already been through, the formatting, the footnotes, references, etc. It's all insane how much work goes into it. I also got to learn a lot about the language, the "legalese" and the "UN-speak" that is used, and being able to go

through a document first hand and provide support for it was a pretty damn good feeling.

THE MOST DELICIOUS PIZZA

I ended up staying pretty late, late enough that I had to cancel all my plans for the evening and we were probably the last ones to leave the building. But it was totally worth it.

Afterwards a friend hit me up and asked me if I wanted to go to food, so I agreed and dinner ended up turning into a few drinks and going to bed at 3am.

Good day.

"How about the quote 'how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." - A. A. Milne

Woke up a bit late this morning and was feeling a bit sick from the night before, BUT I MADE IT INTO WORK, more importantly, I made it into work before a few people. I mosey'd around a bit, just

a bit, and did some work. I got a new task today so I'll be populating some spreadsheets for the next little while. 

While doing that, one of my good friends (he is Brazilian and Italian, what a cool mix right?) wanted to meet up for a coffee before saying good bye. *cue tears here* 

I met him up for coffee and we spoke and talked a bit and the whole time all I could think of was how fast the time was going and how short this internship is and will be. Already, I'm almost a month into the internship, which means I only have about two months left - only two months left in one of the greatest cities in the world.

I am heartbroken. What's even worst is the friends that I make now...are leaving soon. So many people that I've met only just recently are leaving. They're going home, they're continuing their lives and they're doing other things. It's heartbreaking because the UN is so full of happiness and hellos, while walking hand in hand with sorrows and goodbyes. The friends I make here, who I clicked and got along with, those who are kind hearted and whose wavelengths connect with him will come and they will go. It's scary and it's sad - it feels worst than being left alone; it feels like being left behind. 

Reflecting on this now, I know it sounds immature and it sounds insecure and yes I will move on and do other things, etc. but in that moment, being told that a friend, a cherished kindred spirit is leaving, it does fracture the soul a bit as they take a piece of your heart with you. I experienced that when I lived in France in Grenoble and my friends were leaving one by one... I was lucky because I was one of the earlier people to leave, and unlucky because I had to leave so much behind. 

But of course, those moments fade and that feeling, although now lodged in my heart, will eventually change and evolve into fondness, fondness of the memories that I had with these people who will leave. When I see photos or hear words or phrases, I will reminisce and remember the kindness, always the kindness.

Dessert, main, appetizer, bread stick and apparently some guy
from New York Fleet week showed up.

As I walked back to my office, I did some more work on my project and then at around lunch time, it was time for lunch! One of the very, very, very lovely ladies at my office wanted to take the interns out to lunch at the Delegate's Dining Room! We headed on down to the floor and had our reservations, went inside and were greeted by this spectacular view of the river, the bridge and the island across from it. The plates and the setting was done beautifully and the atmosphere was calm and ambient. 

When we sat down, we were brought a basket full of different types of bread and these delicious, almost flatbread like baked cheese bread "sticks" to start off with. There were three tables full of food for people to go and get whatever they'd like to eat. 

The first one was the appetizer table and they had smoked salmon, smoked duck, crab bisque, different salads and sauces and more that I just do not remember. It was very fresh.

The second table had main course and there were options with smoked cod, chicken and sausage, season's vegetables, Korean beef and a chef at the end serving a delicious baked salmon with mango sauce. 

At the dessert table was all kinds of cakes, macaroons, mousse, fresh fruit and others. 

It was delicious, for the price ($35), all you can eat, it was pretty good. The waiters came by to refill our water constantly, but I was a bit disappointed that they never came back with the basket of bread again. 

I think everyone should go there at least once to enjoy the atmosphere and have that great experience to dine with foreign dignitaries and other UN personnel. It's definitely a cool experience and great for your taste bud and tummies. We ended up talking for quite some time, for so long that by the time I got back to the office, it was almost already time to go.  I talked a bit more to my office co-workers and then headed out back home. I was so exhausted from all my activities and other things that I was doing this past week that I got home and just passed out. 

Goodbye with smiles

Couldn't pass out for long though, my friend and a few of his co-workers were meeting up in the park by my place so I got up (begrudgingly) and out of bed and headed over. 

When I got to the park, they had great eyes because I honestly did not seem them at all, they were the ones that found me and waved. We sat and talked for a good long while, long after the sun went down. It was really nice actually, it was the kind of conversations I really missed, ones where we talked about language, history, all these different academic and cultural-based topics where I could very freely ask questions to try to learn. It was really wonderful having people who were from different places explain, for example, their political system and their experiences as a person living in that culture. 

I love conversations like this. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it's nice to talk about things that do not matter like the Kartrashians or Drumpf, but sometimes I'd rather talk about something that really does matter and will help me learn and grow in the future. I don't want to talk about the latest shoes or fashion trend (mostly because I have no idea what they are to be honest), I want to talk about the lastest news and the business trends. I want to know about what's going on in the world around me, how it'll affect me and how it'll affect those around me. 

At the risk of sounding like a complete loser - I thrive off this stuff. I'm such a news and trivia junkie (as you may have noticed after reading some of my blog) that I want to hear and learn more constantly. I may be curious by nature... but then again, I may just be nosy. I enjoy conversations that are intellectually stimulating and provoke curiosity.  

At the end of the night, everyone, unfortunately had to head home and say goodbyes. 

"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!