A m e r i c a : N E W Y O R K // Manhattan Day 3

Accommodation Info :

Times Square, Manhattan via Airbnb, this is the link of the place : https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/311965

You can get RM84 rebate for your first Airbnb stay in any part of the world by clicking this link with my referral code : www.airbnb.com/c/itan915?s=8

All you need to do is to sign up using the link above and you can start booking your accommodation for your vacation!

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28th October 2015 | Wednesday

It's back to free and easy, so we took the liberty to rest more and woke up at around 8am. Prepared and packed up our luggage, we set off to Chinatown again to buy American Ginseng. Many have said that the authentic ones with reasonable price are located there. Weather was a little moody, there was a drizzle as we started our journey. And the umbrella we brought was too small, we decided to buy a bigger umbrella.

 

  

While looking for a shop, I came across this BMW car plate, ' I love NY, so WUT'. Awesome!! I want a car plate like that, but it isn't possible in Malaysia, haha.

 

We bought this specific packing as my mother's friend bought this same one for her in the past. After this, we went to the nearest subway to head over to the Museum Of Natural History.

The subway leads directly to the museum and is slightly decorated with historical stuffs on the wall, like this T-Rex fossil shown in the picture. The moment I saw the entrance to the museum from the subway, I turned grim, it turns out that there's a freaking lotsa people who wants to visit due to the rainy weather outside! I was telling myself, "OMG, we'd be wasting a lot of time queuing up like this, bummer".

I decided to look for another entrance to compare which queue would be shorter. I headed out of the subway and went to the main entrance of the museum while Iris stayed at subway to queue. As expected, the queue was long too. Then again, I tried to ask one of the staffs on which queue to stick to and where I could redeem for my admission tickets. To my surprise, the staff asked me to follow her and I told her I had to look for Iris at the subway entrance. So, we went to look for Iris and got escorted into the museum! We literally avoided the long queue which could take about 1h 30m! She was such a lifesaver, we were so thankful! 

 

American Museum of Natural History

Address : Central Park West & 79th St, New York

Phone : +1 212-769-5100

Hours : 10:00 AM - 5:45 PM

Website : http://www.amnh.org/

We entered and our stomachs growled, we need to have our brunch first before spending a long day at the museum. Thus, we decided to head over to the food court in the museum. The place was packed like sardines! Fortunately, we got a table as soon as a group of people left the place.

 

This was what we had for our meal. However, I was extremely shocked at the price for something simple like this. This hurts my wallet, I could have had better food outside in the city, sob. It was about 1pm when we finished our meal, we had to start exploring the museum!

There was a queue for this too, so many people wanted to take picture with the Easter Island Head which got popular thanks to Night at the Museum. It was so funny in the movie. "Dum Dum! You give me gum gum!"

 

My favorite part of the museum, dinosaurs! Well, I'm not the only fan, the crowd here was immense as well!

 

 

It was about 4.30pm when I took this, we were at the top floor after visiting the dinosaurs. It's still raining outside, look at the mist, it was cold! But I'm still loving the weather so far!

 

 

Selfie with the blue whale!

We left the place and the rain just got heavier. So, we took the subway back to East Broadway and headed to the nearest place for a meal before shifting to another homestay.

We actually enjoyed Mc Donald's here, the meal was prepared upon order. Love my food hot! And also, the McD burger I had was larger than the ones in Malaysia. Iris looked like 'I want my Happy Meal *pouting* ' in the picture, lol.

Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Burger

Price : $6.95

Taste : 7/10

I got to say that the taxi drivers here are just friendly. Every ride I had here, the taxi drivers would just initiate conversation and tell me their stories. In this particular ride to Times Square, this taxi driver told me that he didn't enjoy his New Year in Times Square as the crowd started gathering as early as 10am to camp and celebrate the countdown. That's crazy! When he brought his family to Times Square at 10pm for the celebration, he was about 6 blocks away, can you imagine that!? So, he told me in an upset tone that he could only see fireworks and some balloons from so far away. The sight must have been amazing being at Times Square for the countdown.

When we reached the next homestay in Times Square, we were waiting for the host as she had an urgency at work. We waited close to 2 hours, we were already depressed with the fact that our times were wasted. When she arrived, she apologised repeatedly and helped us with our belongings to her unit. Her unit is 2 flights of stairs away from the ground, there's no elevator as we already knew. Once we settled at her unit, we freshened up and went for dinner. The host, J was feeling bad to make us wait, so she decided to treat us for dinner. We wanted something different and she recommended us one of her favorite dining spots in the city. We were heading for Ethiopian cuisine.

Meskerem

Address : 124 Macdougal St, New York

Phone : +1 212-777-8111

Hours : 12:00 PM - 12:00 AM

Meskerem Combo 

- consists of Tibs Wat, Gomen Basaega, Yebeg Alecha, Miser Alech, Miser Wat and others

Price : $16.95

Taste : 7/10

 

It's our very first time trying Ethiopian food, and we gotta say that it tastes similar to Indian food. The Injera(not shown) which is an Ethiopian staple food, was not as appetizing as we thought, it was rather sticky and flat in terms of taste. Tosai tasted better than Injera for me, LOL. Still, it was a good experience! But is it a hearty meal? Not really. Given a choice, I'd go for Indian food any time of the day. And there goes my crave for Indian food as off typing at this very moment.

We finished dinner around 11 and headed to bed after a nice warm shower.

Next post : Manhattan Day 4

A m e r i c a : N E W Y O R K // Woodbury-Manhattan Day 2

27th October 2015 | Tuesday

We never realised we were that tired last night, we woke up late! We were supposed to reach a bus pickup point at Bowery before 8.30am which took 15-20 minutes of walking. Hurriedly, we prepared ourselves and rushed to the pickup point. Thankfully, we reached on time but the bus was not here yet.

 

We rushed so much that we forgot about breakfast. Therefore, we had to grab a snack while waiting for the bus to come. I chose Doritos because I have always watched their advertisements since years ago especially during each Super Bowl championship. The advertisements are funny and interesting, you should take a look. I went to ask the shop owner from whom I bought my snack from regarding the arrival of the Woodbury bus, he said that the bus comes late once in a while due to traffic. That's a relieve to hear, at least I know I didn't miss the bus. By the way, Bowery is also part of Chinatown already, along the way, we see many Chinese shops and people, mostly speaking in Cantonese!

Our bus is here, we're heading to Woodbury!

The journey to Woodbury takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes, so we rest and do some sightseeing while on our way. Iris laughed so hard when she took a picture of Subaru showroom at the outskirts of the city as I asked her to snap pictures of something that isn't available in Malaysia. I bombarded her with facts about Subaru and she laughed all the way. I can therefore conclude that she is not into cars, haha.

All the trees are like this during our journey, autumn season is beautiful!

We reached at about 10.30am, finally!

The moment we reached, the first thing we went after was food! 

Carnitas Burrito

Price : $7.25

Taste : 6/10

What a 'beautiful mess'. It doesn't look too appetizing but it actually tastes quite okay. Well, I wasn't too satisfied with the taste as I expected better. People have been saying that Chipotle is very good but I think that I have tasted better elsewhere. Iris didn't eat so much of this as she isn't a fan of beans. The staffs really put a lot of guacamole though, very fulling. What I love was the Chipotle sauce from Tabasco, the fiery smoky taste really triggered my taste buds. Speaking about service, I find it rather slow as they took their time to prepare the buritos for me, I hope it isn't like this at other branches.

She ordered Pumpkin Spiced Latte from Pret. I never tried this before and was never a fan of pumpkins. This was an exception though, it tasted nice. I like Latte and the pumpkin spice just went well together. Latte blend was silky smooth, good coffee!

The shopping began immediately after brunch!

We shopped for about 5 hours and time really flew! It wasn't enough at all, there were several brands we wanted to head to but time was running out. It's a nice place to shop, things here are affordable for middle end labels, we didn't want to leave, sob! Lesson learnt, go for the brands you want first, never browse one shop after another.

Before heading to the pick up point, we managed to buy a chocolate frozen yogurt from Pinkberry, it's as good as Llaollao. The texture of the froyo is so smooth. Tastewise, the chocolate wasn't too concentrated, thus the aftertaste didn't linger much. Back to Manhattan!  

When we reached back to Bowery where the bus picked us up, it was about 7.30pm. Since we shopped and were handsful with bags, we had to get a ride back to our unit first. Dropped our stuffs and immediately head out to Chinatown!

The entrance of Manhattan Bridge, very scenic. It looks so neat and fine, love details of the architecture.

We reached Chinatown after passing Manhattan Bridge. We were starving and needed to find a place for dinner. Using the trusty Yelp app to look for good food, we walked to a restaurant to have Chinese cuisine.

When we entered the restaurant, it was packed! We had to sit all the way to the back which is close to the kitchen. Still, we felt fortunate to be able to get a table. By the time we reached here, it was about 9pm already and it was quite cold and windy outside, feels nice to be indoors.

Shredded Pork & Preserved Cabbage with Rice Cakes

Price : $4.95

Taste : 6/10

We find this rather plain, the rice cakes were quite smooth, but not as good as the ones we had in Malaysia. There's nothing much to describe, you might like it if you are a rice cake person. I do find the shredded pork tasty, but the preserved cabbage was rather blant.

Shanghai Lo Mein with Beef

Price : $5.95

Taste : 9/10

This one taste surprisingly good. Our first impression were that it was too oily and that it looked rather plain. Well, I was fooled by the looks of it, we got addicted to it when we slurped the noodles into our mouth. This is definitely worth trying, second to Xiao Long Bao since the dumplings are so famous here among the locals. But if I were to choose, this would be my first choice.

Pork Fried Dumplings

Price : $4.95

Taste : 4/10

This was a bad order, we should not have asked for this if we knew it was this bad. It was very oily, and it the dumpling skin was very thick, not to our liking at all. The fact that the skin was thick and that the texture was not so good, we got turn off by this dish. Iris was curious to try this out because she thought it would be as good as those Japanese Gyoza that she usually orders at Japanese restaurants.

Xiao Long Bao/ Pork Steamed Dumplings

Price : $4.95

Taste : 7/10

This is their signature dish, it's the top favorite among locals, the Xiao Long Bao. In my opinion, I prefer Canton-i/Dragon-i Xiao Long Bao more compared to the ones here. The dumpling skin is also thick, but not as thick as the one we had from the Pork Fried Dumpling, there's this puffiness sensation as you bite the dumpling. As you bite it, you get this exploding feel where the soup just gushes out into your mouth. Beware though, if you ate it while it was just served, you might 'burn' your tongue.

We were the last customer by around 10.30pm, everyone have left and the staffs were mopping the floor and cashier already closing sales. We had a chance to talk to the lady boss and captain as we needed to know where to get authentic American Ginseng. When you come to Chinatown, you must buy this because it's much cheaper here. They have a strong China accent as they spoke and Iris had some trouble trying to interpret to me what they spoke. I was already kinda lost, trying my best to understand what they were saying. When we got the details, we left the place with our take aways since we couldn't finish out food.

Shanghai Cafe

Address : 100 Mott St, New York

Phone : +1 212-966-3988

Hours : 11:30 AM - 11:00 PM

Website : http://www.shanghaicafenyc.com

Have you guys wondered about those Chinese takeout boxes? The ones that we always see in American movies and TV series. Well..

Next post : Manhattan Day 3