NJ and the Big Apple ~ Part 3

On Friday, the four of us (Mr. kenju, me and our 2 daughters), took the PATH train from Jersey City, NJ into NYC. It comes into NY right at Ground Zero (former site of the World Trade Center). The top photo is where I was peering in between a pillar and the construction mesh, to see some of the present work in the area. When we got to the main sidewalk, we heard beautiful music from a choir. They were singing the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful. I had to snap a shot of them, but I have no idea where they were from.

The photos got out of sequence when I scanned them. The next one is a fortune from a cookie in the restaurant we ate in on Friday night. It is so apropos of mr. kenju, that I HAD to save it!

www.China46.com
This is the place we ate on Friday night. My brother-in-law met us back at our hotel in NJ, and took us here for dinner. It was a pretty good meal; abundant and tasty. We had a few things I had never eaten before, such as bok choy and some kind of tofu. I tried a little bit of everything, and my favorite was the beef and broccoli. The place is not fancy, but the service is good - and it is clean.
If you are looking for dishes, glassware and other ceramic or glass dinner wares, go to Fishs Eddy, at 88 Broadway and 19th St. or 122 Montague St., Brooklyn. They have some very different and interesting stuff, which you can see on their website as well:

www.FISHSEDDY.com

Across the street from Fishs Eddy is ABC Carpet and Home, which is a good place to shop for small gifts (as long as you have plenty of moolah!) We heard that an actress likes to shop there (I think it was Goldie Hahn, or maybe it was her daughter).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have you seen the knock-off purses in NYC? There are vendors along the streets, who at the mere mention of a policeman, will pack it all up in a bedspread and haul it out of sight. It is illegal for them to sell the purses, but there are hundreds of them in NY. The better ones, the ones you can generally get for less money are in "secret" stores. My daughters and I walked along a street in Chinatown and before long, a young woman asked in broken English if we were interested in bags; mentioning Prada, Gucci, etc. We said yes, and were instructed to follow her. We walked around the block and into a boarded-up building, following her down a series of hallways in what appeared to be an unoccupied building. Soon we came to a room that had purses hanging from floor to ceiling on four walls. We looked at most of them, and asked the prices, which seemed reasonable to me, except that the bags all had very high-priced names on them, like the ones mentioned above, as well as Kate Spade. We saw some we liked, but we decided to look elsewhere. As we walked out, the woman called us back and asked what we would like to pay for the purses. We settled for $10 to $15 less than she originally wanted, and walked out with our new purses in black plastic bags. Mine is Gucci.