last week, my cousin jully had a day off and invited me to go with her to explore chinatown and the lower east side.  we had not seen each other in a while. i am so happy we had the chance to spend the whole afternoon together, walking around, exploring  and chatting.  

we started by going to chinatown.  we met for lunch at tasty hand-pulled noodles. this little hole in the wall place is wonderful and you get quite the bang for your buck! neither one of us was able to finish our food.  

we shared the fried pork dumplings and just as jully predicted, that place was just right for them.  sometimes fried dumplings can be too greasy, thankfully, the people at tasty hand-pulled noodles knew what they were doing!

jully had the beef hand-pulled noodles:

i had the seafood hand-pulled noodles:

after dinner we walked around the markets in chinatown.  we decided we must go back and so some shopping there because the seafood, vegetables and fruit looked so much fresher!  

we definitely behaved as tourists.

on our walk we went into la plaza cultural community garden. i was founded in 1976 and sits on 27,000 sq. ft.; it is a beautiful garden that reminded me of the movie the secret garden.

it has over 100 members.  

besides all the flowers and plants, there are a lot of little details everywhere to make you smile.

after relaxing in the garden for a while we kept walking around alphabet city.  

it is nice to just walk around aimlessly in new york city.  

there is always something to see. 

jully became my art director for the day.  she pointed out things for me to photograph even if she was sometimes a bit forceful with her requests… :)

to round out the day we stopped by a great bar to have a few drinks and nachos.

thursday was such a fun day! i am very happy jully called me up to meet up and i can’t wait to do it again!

thanks for stopping by!