City cultures

I've only been here about three weeks, so I haven't done much outside of Hell's Kitchen where I live and the immediate vicinity. So when Brent suggested checking out some different areas of Manhattan, I immediately jumped on the idea.

So we decided to explore Chinatown before heading to Little Italy for dinner on Saturday. The second I got off the subway, I felt like a celebrity because people came at me like I was a magnet.

"You buy bag! Prada, Fendi, Gucci" shouted several Chinese vendors at once. After about five minutes, I got sick of saying "no thanks" and just averted my eyes - which was hard because there was so much to look at. If you want a designer purse or watch knock-off, boy is this the place to go. But if you even so much as glanced at a T-shirt, you'd inevitably hear "you like T-shirt? $10 or two for $20!" Yeesh. I was just looking!

But I loved that there was no mistaking that we were in Chinatown, even without a map, because every store was either dedicated to their culture or had Chinese lettering on them near the English words.

And I've never seen so many stands dedicated to seafood. Every other store had a smattering of fresh fish, crab, and shrimp that you could buy cheap by the pound. Too bad I don't eat anything that comes from the sea with the exception of tuna in a can.

Afterwards, we headed into Little Italy, which was beautifully all lit up in red, green, and white - appropriately - for the holidays.

And even when it's not around the holidays, the parking meters still look like this:

Awesome!

So we strolled up and down the neighborhood looking for a great place to eat and found Sal Anthony's restaurant. It was probably the biggest restaurant I've been to in New York, but I loved the atmosphere because colorful murals took up most of the wall space. I absolutely loved our eggplant appetizer which was followed by a simple, but great, spaghetti and meatballs. Classic!

We skipped dessert, but that's only because Brent wanted to stop by Koreatown so he could introduce me to Pinkberry, a place he tried when his parents came to town a few weeks ago.

It's apparently this trendy place that is only located in New York or California. Its frozen yogurt comes in original or green tea flavor and is made without preservatives or excess sugars or other additives. Plus, you can choose from a variety of guilt-free toppings to put on it, including fruit, cocoa or fruity pebbles cereal, and rice cakes.

I chose to get the original flavor with fruity pebbles and for some reason they put rice cakes on it also. But it was OK with me because they rice cakes tasted like marshmallows! But the dessert was just sweet enough satisfy my sweet tooth, but not so much that it made me feel guilty for eating it. It really is a great dessert - unless you order green tea with blueberries on it like Brent - Y-U-C-K!!

Too bad there's only two locations in Manhattan or it would have been in danger of replacing just Starbucks as my splurge of the week!