Before that happened, we had a look at Chinatown, the infamous NY Chinatown. Spoiler alert, it is pretty much like any other Chinatown I have seen so far. We could not find the usual Chinese Arch though :(
Walking through a Chinatown is always a funny experience for me. I suddenly seem to noticeably grow in comparison to my surrounding fellow humans. During my gigantesque feeling, I come across a food shop that sells strange, yet edible creations advertised by a small, Asian lady (this time young) in broken English. This time it was Isi's turn. She had a bizarre Black Tea with Milk on Ice with black pieces in it that should create bubbles. And as usual, it looked interested, but in the end was not that tasty.
We closed our visit off with a meal at a Vietnamese restaurant which was absolutely delicious, but I could not tell you what I had for the life of me ;)
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| Isi and the mysterious tea-like beverage |
We decided to walk the 30 minutes from Chinatown to the theatres on Broadway going through NoHo (North of Houston Street... Yes and SoHo is South of Houston Street), a surprisingly quiet almost residential area with a lot of trees and wide streets. And when you think that New York can't get weirder, you come across a boat put into the side of a building on the 3rd floor or so (check out the picture).
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| Why on earth is there a boat?!? |
While walking, we noticed something very odd about NY; the traffic lights at each crossroad actually not only slow down the cars, but the pedestrians, too. We were running a bit late and we wanted to walk a bit faster. Plainly spoken: Impossible. Too many people and especially, too many friggin' traffic lights.
Also, some things you see can only be described as odd at first sight, such as this news reporter who needed to make herself taller than she really was to get the perfect shot.
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| Ah yes, the fate of small people |
When we finally made it, we noticed yet again, that New Yorkers seem to enjoy queueing "outside" on the streets. For some obscure reason, the theaters and event halls of New York did not take the space for foyers into account.
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| Waiting for the musical... outside |
The musical was fantastic and truly enjoyable. For those of you, who are not familiar with the story of this prize winning musical, I can outline it to you based on my limited comprehension of the words that were sung and the dance choreographies.
So there were these Cats who call themselves "gellical cats". They explained it, but it was not clear, because they all spoke at the same time. Then once every unspecified interval one cat can also become a gellical cat and can start out fresh or become better or go up into the heavens.
Then you have the introduction of every single member of the gang of gellical cats, but it is unclear who wants to win the trophy. There is one cat who is quite battered and beaten who can sing fantastically about her memories of being awesome, but when she fails to be awesome, everyone is sad.
At the end, the fat chief cat gets taken hostage by a renegade random other cat, who then releases him directly after again, but because of this he saw the battered cat sing and that made him decide that the battered cat can become gellical and that meant that she flew to the ceiling. The End.
The unclarity of the story aside, the songs are fantastic and the show was immense. The theatre was surprisingly small, but that gave it a very cozy atmosphere. We had the first row of the balcony, so we had a perfect view of all the action.
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| The view from the first row of the balcony was awesome! |
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| For some reason, during the break, half the viewers went on the stage and the fat chief cat stayed to answer questions... |
At the end of it, we walked once more over Time Square just to see it by night. It is every bit as bright and confusing for the eyes as shown in the news or on TV. Nice experience, but a bit too much for me.
We finished the night off with our first ever ride with an Uber taxi. We just never did it before, but that night seemed a good time to do so. I think every American does it nowadays, because you can save yourself quite a lot of money that way.
The ride itself was uneventful. Our driver on the other hand was a rather interesting individual. He was orginally from Pakistan, but he joined the US military when he came over in 2002 (yep, remember 9/11), was sent directly to Afghanistan, got shot 3 times and sent home to the US, where he then received his citizenship. I did not dare ask him anymore about his time in Afghanistan. I was not sure if this was a sore spot with the person and I felt it was tactless, so I left it at that.
By that time, we got back to our place and went directly to sleep as we had to have an early start in order to get to the Statue of Liberty on time.
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| Time Square at night |
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