I’ll always enjoy going to New York City (纽约) for a weekend visit of food, culture, and energy, even though my life has led me to set up my base camp in the mountains of Colorado.  Halloween this year found me in this melting pot of humanity visiting my friend Bingbing Xue and her gracious roommate Audie Wang.

The first day, Bingbing and I went on a very long walk across Manhattan, from stem to stern, passing many familiar landmarks.  A pit stop in Chinatown around lunch reaped a harvest of bubble tea, followed by steamed dumplings (灌汤包) and noodles (姜懿珈) at Joe’s Shanghai Restaurant.  We made our way over to some clothing shops where I decided to begin the process of a long overdue makeover of my wardrobe.  At night, Audie met us and we enjoyed dinner at Xi’an Famous Foods.

The weekend’s main draw was Saturday’s New York City Halloween parade.  As you might imagine, this parade was massive on scale, with 2 million spectators and an estimated 60-to-70,000 participants.  Yours truly was clad in pajamas with a big dog face emblazoned on the front and dog paw prints all over the pants.  You could not imagine the sights and sounds I saw that night as we marched up 6th Avenue through the classic neighborhood of Greenwich Village.  While I typically shun large festivals and their crowds, on this night I had a terrible amount of fun, and getting to meet and chat with all of Bingbing and Audie’s friends while we shuffled along the parade route made the night quite memorable.

Until we meet again, New York City.