New York Travels Day 5: Empire State Building, Chinatown, Souvenir Shopping

Honestly, the first thing I did today was decide not to go to the reading Lev Grossman was supposed to be holding that day. I had found out purely by coincidence that the author of "The Magicians" would be giving a reading for the New York University Creative Writing Program. note: If you haven't read these books yet, do it now! Currently it is my favorite book trilogy and, as I've told people who ask, it is basically what J.K. Rowling would've written if she'd been writing for adults. Just think of the differences between yourself in highschool and college and then add magic and you've basically got the premise of the story. Anyways, I decided against it mostly because he was supposed to be doing it with another author and I felt it would be pretty stupid to go since I had no idea who the other author was or what she had written.

So, back to the day. Started the day with a couple chocolate donuts and an apple juice again. Also, not to brag, but I think by this time I've gotten pretty good with this riding of trains. I had a lot of things crossed off on the list of things I figured I'd do while in New York, so basically this day was set for just taking care of possibly the last couple of places. I started off with the Empire State Building. After paying the admission fee and once again walking through what basically amounted to airport security again, I headed up to the top. There was a brief history overview of the building of the Empire State Building. At the top, I could see... well... everything. We were 80-something floors up, though not quite the top (I was still too cheap to pay the extra $20 to go to the extra 20 floors to the very top). The deck was packed with other tourists. It was actually pretty uncomfortable as we were all packed so tightly. And I had ridden on rush hour trains in Japan. So I did get a couple pictures before getting bored of the whole thing.

the Downtown view

You can kind of see Central Park from here

the people as seen on full-zoom with my camera

Oh, I also got to see people use their selfie-sticks by sticking them off the edge of the Empire State Building. After taking pictures for a bit until boredom hit, I headed back to check-off another place on my list of... well... places to visit. Luckily it was also about lunch time, so I headed off to Chinatown.

I don't know, I guess I was expecting more or something else. First off, is it weird that though it is called Chinatown, every shop seemed to be run by an Indian man yelling at me to come in and buy some cheap trinkets. I don't know, I guess I had been expecting to be yelled at by a Chinese man instead. Luckily, I'd already bought enough cheap trinkets to satisfy everyone back home. Also, it seemed like there were a lot more Vietnamese restaurants than Chinese restaurants. And for some reason, I was hoping there would be street vendors selling dim sum like manapua and pork hash (ok, I have no idea what they're actual Chinese names are or what they're called on the mainland, I only know what they're called in Hawaii). I wandered around trying to distinguish which would be a good place to have lunch at before just saying "fuck it" and heading into the first restaurant on the street I turned down. Ate some pork hash and some shrimp dumplings and tried to plot out what to do next. After lunch, I spent the next ten to fifteen minutes using the toilet because, if you've been paying attention, my food intake so far has not been the most compatible with each other. Honestly, at first I thought I had food poisoning until I remembered that perhaps chocolate donuts and dim sum do not mix well with each other especially when all I'd drank that day was a bottle of apple juice.

Spent the rest of the day wandering around. Honestly, I'm not too sure where I ended up for a while. I know I bought more souvenirs but I'd apparently forgotten to take pictures so I have no idea where I spent that time. Oh, I know for a while I ended up in a clothing store to buy some shirts for my siblings. And I got suckered into spending a ton of time at a shop that sold mostly paper products due to my notebook weakness (and yes I did buy a couple for just myself). Oh, I did make it to Nintendo World! Everything Nintendo, on display.

After all the shopping, I headed back to Terry's place to drop off everything (luckily by this point he'd given me a key to hang onto while I was visiting) and then it was back out for dinner. Terry mentioned that he knew of a good Korean fried chicken place nearby his place. Got lost for a bit, but eventually I met Terry there and we gorged ourselves on delicious chicken. We talked story for a bit, reminiscing about Keio and Japan, until eventually it got late enough for sleep to come.