New York day 1 - Vietnamese theme

On the first evening, back from Central Park to our hotel, we went to a small Vietnamese restaurant, in upper Manhattan, that was on our way, nothing worthy of a report I'm afraid (I think the restaurant was called Saigon, but I don't particularly want to remember it.. not very vietnamese really):

I suppose we were in the mood for Vietnamese food as we'd talked about a trip to Vietnam in the near future whilst on the plane.

Anyway,the next day we aimed at Little Italy and Chinatown after a walk on Broadway to hunt breakfast.... The weather was not very promissing: dark and rainy....

We started in Canal Street up Mulberry Street, in Little Italy. We did not fancy stopping at a restaurant in Little Italy as it seemed a bit too touristy to be trusted - and to be honest, after having been in Italy, I tend to avoid Italian resturants in other countries, It's never as god as the real McCoy I'm afraid...-

Anyway, the quarter was lovely with restaurants in the 'Lady and the Tramp' style.
Some Delis attracted my attention though with a great selection of Ialian products, homemade cheese and pasta. (Ah, the Deli theme seemed to appear rather early!)

Then we moved onto Chinatown, which we loved as it was so lively and busy, food everywhere!
We started watching carefully though as we were hunting for the Bahn Me Saigon, highly recommended by Mycookinghut.
We found it, a tiny little narrow shop with the Bahn Me counter at the back! We had our food radar on so we found it quite easily!

We walked to the park, where there was quite a few people, found a bench and started eating our foodie treasure. It started raining, but equipped with our umbrellas, we were only reasonnably getting wet, totally absorbed in a vietnamese food vortex: the Bahn me was as great as Mycookinghut promised!. By the time we looked around us, it was pouring so hard that everybody else had vanished from the park. It was quite funny, we stayed there in a sort of 'Hamlet' moment...

New York New York!

That's it, I'm back. I absolutely loved it. Great city, great people, great food. What else can one ask for!!!
I have taken many photos and tasted lots of great foods I will be blogging about.
I was really impressed with the quality of the food, its freshness and its authenticity. The only letdown was the only restaurant we chose via the travel guides. All the other places we ate in hit the mark and more. So watch out for the next posts!

Ah! and somebody asked me about my eye op in one of the comments: yes the eye operation was successful. The first days were painful, the first week was difficult as my brain and my body were trying to cope with the changes. and week 2 was spent in new York where I could enjoys the views with my brand new sight!So yes, I would advise the operation....

Bear with me...

I have been a bit slow lately to post and catch up with your great blogs, my apologies for that.

There are good reasons though: I have just undergone laser sugery for my eyes - so very limited computer time allowed.

Next week I will be in New York on holidays and I shall come back with healed eyes and lots of photos and foodstuff to show you :). Any tips for what to do or where to go is welcome!

Next post in over a week!