Sights around downtown Manhattan

So, looks like taking melatonin is not much help for my jet-lagged induced insomnia. Well, here's to hoping I will not get sick from the lack of sleep! In the meantime, I may as well give you a look-see into what we got up to last weekend.

On Saturday, we mostly explored around the city on foot. Our main goal for the day was to see Chinatown, which is a fair distance from our apartment on Wall Street. First, I brought Rob to the South Street Seaport, which I'd encountered the day before. It's a historic site with lots of restaurants and specialty shops. We encountered a pretzel specialty shop, and I had a taste of my first NY pretzel - a much larger, softer and sweeter version of the ones I'm used to in the pretzel packets I used to buy in Australia. This pretzel cost us $2.50 - compare to the pretzel you can buy from the street stands for $1. It was pretty nice though, and Rob said it was much better than the one he had on his first trip to NY.



There are a few ships docked at this seaport, and this photo is of the Peking.


On the way to Chinatown, we saw a large building in the distance which we'd correctly guessed was the City Hall.


Photo 1: In one of the parks along the way, we saw squirrels! So cute! Haha, I did the typical tourist thing and took photos. The locals must've rolled their eyes at the sight of me taking photos of a very common creature.
Photo 2: A small section of Chinatown, which is home to over 150,000 Chinese, making it one of the largest Chinese communities outside of the Orient. Streets were packed, and I've never seen such a large Chinatown before!


Malaysian food is not very well represented in NY, so when we saw a Malaysian restaurant called New Malaysian, we stopped by for a bite to eat. We ordered hofun (called 'chowfun' here) and nasi lemak along with some ice chendol and ice lychee. I wasn't very impressed with the food - both dishes were too salty, and the sambal in the nasi lemak was made like a sweet and sour condiment! Furthermore, the drinks were made far too sweet - in fact I got mine changed so that it wasn't too sweet, but it got a bit OTT after a few sips. The meal was such an overload on my tastebuds, but I guess if that's what the demand is, that's what they'll have to give. Serving sizes were generous, as to be expected in US. Not so authentic, and I miss good Malaysian food! We paid about $20.



It was a good day, considering how tired we were from jet lag. Hopefully this weekend we'll have a bit more energy!