[...Oh this is the night, it's a beautiful night, and we call it bella notte...]

version française

what's up bitches ?

do you know what is the fastest way to go from china to italy ?

 crossing the street between Chinatown and Little Italy !!






last sunday, i went to NYC to explore Chinatown & co, a niche of cultural diversity in the middle of the big apple. it's a really weird phenomenon : you walk in the street, everything is written in english, shops sell you american stuff...and then bam ! chinese letters and shops full of fresh fruits and fish.

am i still in New York ?

a big part of the district live on tourism : shop after shop full of cheap souvenirs
you can't take a step without someone asking if you want to buy bags, perfume or watches
i personally got a bag that i paid 13 instead of 30 dollars. yeah yeah

i just wandered around chinatown, turning whenever i saw a place that looked nice
of course i ended up getting lost, but it was actually nice, 'cause i ended up in non-touristic streets, where people actually live
i kind of stood out with my skinny jeans, the rayban glasses on my nose, and my huge camera. or my white skin.

it was quite funny to think i was still in New York, in the same city where you find Times Square, with all the lights and the billboards





i wanted to taste china, so i bought a "bubble tea", milk tea (coconut for me), with tapioca bubbles in it

it was....special. tea was good. bubbles, not a fan.

for lunch, i followed the advices from my guidebook and stayed away from tourist restaurants, and went to a tiny shop in a tiny street : a dumpling shop. 5 dumplings for a dollar, and 4 pork buns for another dollar, can't beat that deal !

i also went to the bouddhist temple

and walked around chinatown

the entrance to Manhatttan Bridge

chinese music in the park

 ...then i crossed the street, and went to Little Italy.
whereas Chinatown is genuinely chinese, little italy is mostly here for tourists. italiens don't really live here (mostly they live in brooklyn). there was a time when htey did, and mafia was ruling the whole neighbourhood, but nowadays little italy got eaten by chinatown, and is now a single street, which is mostly an excuse to charge 25 bucks for a plate of spagettis and sell cannelonis.

still, it's nice to see
also, i got called "bella" a couple times. never hurts.



i wanted to stay in the area so i could come back to see it by night, so i walked around lower manhattan

i know, i doesn't look huge on the map, mais it is. to give you an idea : the big loop in central park is around 10k 

i walked the little italy street, until the "italian" shops became scarcer, and i found myself in greenwich village, then NoHo (north of houston street). i went to Washington Square, there were a lot of people enjoying the sun, street musicians, a photographer doing a photoshoot in the middle of the square with four models,...

then i went back to SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston (Street)"),
which was the first district to get one of those anagram-names, launching a new trend for many more neighbourhoods : TriBeCa "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street", NoHo ("NOrth of HOuston Street"), DUMBO ("Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass"), Nolita ("NOrth of Little ITAly"), NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square")...

on ne le dit pas assez, l'architecture à new york est sublime

once upon a time, SoHo was the artistic district, with its cheap lofts.
nowadays, lofts are trendy, and SoHo too, which means the district is gentrified. you can still find art galleries, but mostly fashion stores.

i kept walking down manhattan, and crossed Tribeca,

then arrived in the Financial District, aka the south of manhattan, around where the twin towers were.
i came across New York City Hall.

city hall

chrysler tower and one trade center

entrance to brooklyn bridge

city hall

ensuite je suis remontée vers chinatown and little italy.
chinatown by night is nothing special

but little italy is quite nice (especially, i guess, if you're sited outside a restaurant with a nice plate of pasta)

and then, since i'm kind of crazy, i thought "hey, it's a beautiful night, let's walk back to the station"

which was going to give me a giganormous blister under my right heel

in other news, i also bought my halloween costume, and i'll be Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West...but that will be the subject of the next article...


tchao !