Happy Birthday America!

Happy Fourth of July everyone! How did you spend your holiday? Dan and I had a nice relaxing weekend in the city.

The highlights:

Dan and I invited Nell and Adam on a voyage to Flushing, Queens where we indulged in some authentic Dongbei (aka Northeast Chinese) cuisine at Fu Run.


Of course, we ordered some yummy fare like shrimp dumplings, noodles, spicy ribs, mixed vegetables and lamb...but if we were going to travel an hour by subway for Chinese food, we had to try something different. So we tasted jelly fish (which was surprisingly kind of crispy and not-so-surprisingly salty like the sea) and Dan insisted we order this delicacy recommended by our waitress that was some kind of seafood intestine.


The intestines smelled horrible. They kind of looked like whole wheat pasta in a bed of scallions, but it tasted more like rubbery nothing-ness. It was actually kind of bland. It reminded me a lot of this book I read where the author talked about how Chinese cuisine is all about enjoying weird textures in your mouth. Now this is what she was talking about.


Love Nell's reaction as she watches Dan eat some intestines. Glad we tried it, don't think anyone from the table would order it again.

On 4th of July, Dan and I headed to City Island, which is a tiny seaport town in the Bronx.


It's kind of hard to believe that this sleepy, practically one street town is part of New York City. (We got here by subway and bus!)


This town is known for its seafood, so we headed to Johnny's Famous Reef which has been around since 1950, and had some delicious (and cheap!) fried soft shell crab and fries in a basket and lemonade.


We decided to spend the afternoon at nearby Orchard Beach, which was a world of difference from our quiet morning. When we arrived at the scene, we were amazed to discover a crazy party scene.


I wouldn't call it a relaxing beach experience, by any means. A million people everywhere. The water was refreshing but kind of grimy. On the towel next to us, we watched a mom verbally abuse her children and saw the dad being handcuffed by police for drug possession. I was sad to see that the kids were witnessing this, but they have probably seen much worse.


Besides for beach-going, people seemed to come to Orchard Beach for all kinds of reasons. People watching, playing music really loudly, playing maracas, salsa dancing, basketball playing, barbecuing. It was a cool photo safari for me until a man yelled at me for taking his picture. Yikes! We were a little bit out of our element.


It was a scorching 95 degrees (Dan told me it was the hottest day of his life) so we purchased an umbrella to protect us from the sun and the foot-burning sand but the umbrella either tried to run away or turned inside out every 10 minutes. We were thankful for the umbrella, but we hated the umbrella. We only stayed a few hours. The umbrella didn't come home with us.

Besides that, in keeping with our Independence Day tradition, we saw a bunch of movies: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, and Getting Him to the Greek (with Kim and Nien; after wards we ate burgers by the Hudson River at the Boat Basin).


On Saturday, Dan watched the World Cup (go Germany!) and after 10 years, I finally got new glasses.

And lastly, there was a lot of ice cream. Oh yes, a lot of ice cream. What more can you ask for on the 4th of July? Oh how about the tidbit Dan told me that in high school, he used to wear a Seinfeld t-shirt on Thursdays to get pumped up for the show that night. Is that totally dorky/cute or what?