13:00 Mon.

7 Aug, 2017

ChinaTown

Going around the city

Tags: Brooklyn bridge, china town, little italy, New York, staten island ferry, time square, wall street stock exchange

New York , United States

27 °C

Mostly Sunny

12:00 am

7:57 pm

Thanks to the time difference we woke up early and rested. We had a day full of sightseeing ahead of us.

Giant graffiti of Lady Liberty in a building in the Little Italy.

Again we started the day with one of the free tours. This time we started at the Wall street stock exchange, 5 minutes from our hotel. Despite being early in the morning it was already packed with tourists. There is a statue of George Washington (I think) overlooking NYSE which is decorated with a gigantic american flag. (They really love their flags, I think I saw more flags while being in USA than in my whole life before).

New York Stock Exchange. The most famous one in the world.

It's full of gold inside. — It’s full of gold inside.

After the Wall street we went by the WTC memorial and embarked on the new metro station they build in place of the old one. The metro is dark, dirty and very hot. I wonder if I’m ever going to see a better metro than the one in Hong Kong.

Instead of having one big fire department for the whole city - as in Slovenia, they have numerous small ones with just 1 truck and ladder. I guess because of the traffic this makes sense. — Instead of having one big fire department for the whole city – as in Slovenia, they have numerous small ones with just 1 truck and ladder. I guess because of the traffic this makes sense.

Car for a big city. :) — Car for a big city. 🙂

Watch out you don't fall down there. — Watch out you don’t fall down there.

We came from the underground near the Chinatown. When approaching the district you begin to notice more and more Asians walking around. As we walked into a district you are greeted by old buildings no more than 5 floors high as opposed to 30+ just a block away.

Again we were surprised by the amount of people on the street. Just after the Chinatown there is district called Little Italy. The architecture is the same as in Chinatown small buildings out of brick and on the sides you can notice old rusted fire escape stairs. There were a lot of Italian restaurants on the street serving pasta and similar.

Crowded streets of Little Italy district.

Well well well, this was the last place I expected to see someone selling mandulat.

They are all over the city. I think the idea is that they slowly pump the water up, since it is impossible to have pressure from city pluming to reach high floors of skyscrapers.

The tour ended after about 4 hours of walking. After it Veronika and I walked back through the south harbor. On the way back we decided to grab something to eat from one of the food truck that seem to be at every corner. After reality check on the prices we each took a piece of pizza (which is quite poor with ingredients compared to Slovenia) for about 5$.

You can see police at every corner in the city.

If I remember correctly the floors being renovated will cost 100M $.

Gun laws in New York are quite similar to Europeans. It is in general forbidden to own and carry a gun. Still you find such a store from time to time. This one is for police officers I think.

This words sounds familiar. :) In my dialect in Slovenia we actually call shoes "superga". — This words sounds familiar. 🙂 In my dialect in Slovenia we actually call shoes “superga”.

I said before the city stinks. Well no wonder.

There are traffic jams everywhere. I think it's actually faster to just walk around. — There are traffic jams everywhere. I think it’s actually faster to just walk around.

As an European I never can get used to the tall buildings and always end up looking up in awe.

I don't think there is anything special inside this building. — I don’t think there is anything special inside this building.

In the southern docks you can take a free ferry to the Staten island that goes by the statue of Liberty. On the way there we saw, well at lest a bit of silhouette, a certain bull.

So packed of people that this is the most we saw of it.

Well I bet no-one though he was going to win later that year.

A free way to see the statue of liberty. It departs every few minutes from downtown Manhattan to the Staten Island.

A view from another angle. It truly looks incredible. It's hard to think it was build 100 years ago. — A view from another angle. It truly looks incredible. It’s hard to think it was build 100 years ago.

After the ferry we still had some time left and decided to go far up to the Central Park. We found a random electronic store there were I bought 2 TB external hard drive for 1/4 of the price in Slovenia. Electronic really are cheap there. We took a quick look at the central park and went toward Time Square. If I though there were a lot of people in the city before, I was speechless at time square. Place was so packed with people you could barely move, and not only that there were actually some drivers who though it was good idea to drive through it.

You can hire rickshaws to drive you around central park. It's quite expensive though, 15$ for 5 minutes. — You can hire rickshaws to drive you around central park. It’s quite expensive though, 15$ for 5 minutes.

Central park is surrounded by super expensive hotels.

City streets are perpendicular to each other throughout the city. It just so happened that the time we were there each sunset aligned exactly in the middle of the streets.