exploreNYC

View Chinatown in a larger map

All the Chinatown places to visit conveniently located on a map for you! 

Aji Ichiban
A little kid’s dream. It’s pretty much a Chinese Dylan’s Candy Bar. They have spiders, egg yolk, shark gummies! Sweet.

Noodle Village
This little place off of Mott Street is great for all Hong Kong style food. Best congee. There are a lot of local customers that come for breakfast either everyday or every weekend for HK style breakfast with congee, fried dough sticks, and milk tea. They have great wonton soups, dim sum dishes, and other authentic Cantonese style dishes for a great price!

Big Wong King
Okay, so this place isn’t the cleanest. But it’s always crowded in here, which shows how popular and good it is! They have really fast service and good for for a great price. And its always nice to see their dead ducks that hang outside their entrance window!

Canal St.
So many markets, jewelry stores, and random souvenir shops. It’s a really great place to see both at night and during the daytime because of all the hustle and bustle, shopping, and people that go in and out day.

Vegetarian Dim Sum House
A really great restaurant to go to if you’re a vegetarian. They have these really good cold dishes, like this sweet and sour “roast pork” that’s actually this chewy dough.

Chinatown Ice Cream Factory
Believe it or not, this place is famous and also often very crowded.  They have an assortment of the wildest flavors including rice, black sesame, lychee, zen butter, wasabi, almond cookie, avocado, etc. Very delicious.

View South Street Seaport & Financial District in a larger map

All of the South Street Seaport & Financial District places to visit conveniently located on a map for you!

SOUTH STREET SEAPORT
South Street Seaport is the region bordering the financial district of New York City. It is a big tourist attraction, so there will be tons of people in this area! It’s a great place to take a walk along the water and a place to shop at the many stores inside the mall. During the warmer months, there are free concerts, so it is definitely worth a visit. The Bodies Exhibit can also be found here, so prepared to be amazed (and maybe grossed out!). It is a very family friendly place because there is so much to do here!


FINANCIER PATISSERIE
Financier Patisseries is a more upscale dining place and has a limited lunch menu. However, you can get a healthy lunch here for about $8. They have a wide selection of pastries, ranging from Sacher Torte, Fraisier, Berrie Tartlettes, and Napoleon. People have raved about these desserts because they are very high quality. You certainly get the bang out of your buck!


LA MAISON DU CHOCOLAT
La Maison du Chocolat is a very high class chocolate shop. Even if you don’t want to buy anything, it is worth going in to take a look at their extensive range of chocolates. Although expensive, people say that it is worth it. Some even say that it is comparable to the high quality chocolate of France. The macarons sold at this chocolate shop are also to die for! Sometimes they give out samples with purchases… gotta love free chocolate!

CREPES DU NORD
Crepes du Nord is a French-Scandinavian Creperie and Wine Bar. They serve both savory and sweet crepes! Some of their scrumptious savory crepes include Prosciutto di Parma, Spiced Herring, and Black Forest Ham. For dessert, you may want to try Blueberries and Ice Cream, Lingering Lingonberry, or simply Nutella and banana! There is something here for everyone.

CHRISTOPHER NORMAN CHOCOLATES
If La Maison Du Chocolat is too expensive, you may want to try Christopher Norman Chocolates. The chocolates here are about $2 a piece and were rated highly by many. They also have handpainted chocolates, which is a pretty interesting concept. They also have free tastings! Although not very well known, this chocolate shop is worth a visit.


CITY HALL PARK
Enjoy the beautiful weather at City Hall Park! Relax and unwind— remove yourself from the bustling city and immerse yourself in the nature this park has to offer. This park is said to be more organized and more “European” than other parks. There is a beautiful fountain that would be stunning to take pictures at! Sometimes, they rotate some art exhibits in the park. I love how there’s always something interesting going on at this park!

Another weekend, another tour! This time we went around Rockefeller for some good eateries/free chocolate samples hehe, and then we headed further up to eat lunch and shop more all over Midtown. Here’s a snapshot of our day:

MACAROONS @ Bouchon Bakery. We decided to split a pistachio macaroon. This place is reasonably priced, especially since the macaroons for $3.50 are so huge (they’re almost big as circumference of a normal size drinking cup). They have cool flavors, like raspberry cream, PB&J, etc. Compared to other places I’ve tried, Bouchon’s is most creamy!

BIBIMBAP BURGER @ Social Eatz. Honestly, you haven’t eaten an amazing burger until you’ve tried this. I’m not even a big burger fan, but it was delicious! An Asian American fusion delight— super juicy, the perfect level of spiciness like bibimbap, and ohhh so tasty. Although it was a bit pricy at $12, it’s well worth the experience. It was voted America’s Best Burger, and this restaurant is Angela Sosa’s from Top Chef! 

CUPCAKES @ Sprinkles. It just opened up this new location in NYC— and everything in that little store is cute, from the window display to their colorful tables+couches. And it is a must if you like cupcakes. The truly have the best cupcakes, better than the famous Crumbs+Magnolia’s. They’re not too sweet, but their frosting is deliciously flavored. Their cake is amazingly moist and tasty too, like Key Lime cake with Lemon icing. Omnomnom— my new favorite cupcake place in the city.

STORES @ Lexington & 5th. All stores are glamourfied in NYC. No joke. (And you can always stop in and browse to get free air conditioning in the summer, hehehe.) Here are the glass underground Apple Store and the 5 story Forever 21!

DROOLING @ Macaroon Cafe. We stopped by at this little place to just take a peep, but we didn’t buy because we were already too fat. So many flavors though…………………..

TOURING like tourists. Churches, streets, parks, you name it. Go to the city on a beautiful day and it’s just sitting anywhere and watching people go by. 

For more photos of our trip, check our Flickr!

You know what you want to do… sort of. You have all these ideas whizzing in your head and can’t wait! However, it would suck if you forgot where you actually wanted to go. Here is are some tips on how to plan a successful trip to the city (or anywhere)!

1. Know where you want to go. Jot down a list of the places you want to go.
2. Use Googlemaps! This is a great tool for you to visualize how far each of your destinations are, so you can see if you can manage to walk from place to place. If you need to use transportation, you can view all subway lines on Googlemaps.
3. Be sure to plan your meals! Sometimes you may overdo the shopping and visiting and forget about food. Can’t not have food, right? Plan your meals accordingly in terms of distance of when you want to go. 
4. You can over plan, but don’t expect to go to each of your destinations. You’ll probably find some awesome stores and shops along the way, so you probably won’t end up reaching all of your destinations.
5. Read reviews! Go to Yelp.com to read reviews of the places you want to visit. If you see that restaurants requires a 2 hour wait, then maybe you want to skip over that. Sometimes, people may recommend better alternatives that will be useful.
6. Tackle regions at a time. For NYC, don’t expect to visit SoHo and Central Park in one day. Give yourself a break and explore one area of the city at a time!
7. Have a variety. Unless you know your going to the city for a shopping day specifically, try to choose a range of stores, such as stationery, food, or thrift. Go somewhere you usually don’t go!
8. Pack water/camera/money. Always good things to have. 
9. Print your Googlemap plan. This will be very useful, as you will find yourself referencing the plan to see where you are and cross off the places you visited.
10. Get excited! :) 

We put our Union Square + East Village Tour to the test and tried it out ourselves last Sunday. FUNFUNFUN. FEWDFEWDFEWD. 

Super hot day. Especially at our first location: Passport to Taiwan @ Union Square. There were tons of people and so many great cultural booths. It had everything— performances by these asian dudes rapping to Waka Flocka’s songs in Mandarin, Taiwanese vegans, summer camp booths, cultural food tents! I got a free balloon, except it popped in five minutes and I cried. 

By the time we got out, it was already the afternoon. We headed to 16 Handles for our long awaited froyo! SO MANY FLAVORS AND TOPPINGS- it was overwhelming. Tried all the flavors hehe, my fav were white peach, mint, banana. But the best part was the rainbow cookie topping (which was also why my cup was almost $7…) It made us so freaking full…

We kept walking as we needed to pee and died of thirst at the same time— how is that even possible? Anyways, we stopped at Thirstea! So many different drinks, but we picked thai iced bubble tea. After seeing their cute “first dollar bill” earned, we had a little chat with the owner and go to know more about this place that opened up two years ago.

Next. Pomme Frites. This is a really small place but smells so good. They also have cool menus and their fries come in nice little cones! There are so many flavors of fries and combos of sauce. We just got the original fries and our sauce was ketchup, mayo, onions. Looked gross but was actually really good. Best fries (def better than McDonalds, guys.)

Even though we didn’t eat at Hummus Place because we felt a tad bit too obese, we passed by. The real discovery was next door: the Chocolate Library. If you’re ever in need for a good chocolate bar or a gift, they have tons of different types from all different countries. It also happened to be chocolate tasting hour, lucky us— we got to try some dark Belgium choc. Yum. 

Another snack, almost exploding by now. Takoyaki. These are amazing and a must try. Don’t burn your tongues taking your first bite though!

Check out our other photos here!