Chinatown

The first thing I noticed about Chinatown is that it looked pretty much like the North End, the Italian part of Boston. Chinatown was the location of the Boston garment district. It existed from the late 19th century until about 1990. Much of the area was landfill of former tidal flats. Many of the buildings are former factories, apartments and various businesses. Now they are all pretty much apartments, hotels, new apartment and office buildings. A mish mash of old and new.

The streets are small and windy. There are alleys and a lot of people. It's very densely populated with 28,000 people per square mile.

I wouldn't call it picturesque but like the North End, there are plenty of restaurants, Chinese, Vietnamese and so on.

Below is a picture of where we had lunch. I imagine that most of these restaurants were much more authentic in their offerings on the menu than you would find in the Americanized Chinese restaurants, but then again what do I know? I like chicken drummers and spare ribs.
My friend got a sandwich/rollup deal with pork, veggies, some kind of sauce, wrapped in a pancake. I imagine it was different than what I first thought of when I read "pancake".
I on the other hand was not very hungry. I was not going to order something that I couldn't finish. Instead I went with what you would call, a  safe bet. A breakfast sandwich which essentially was a fried egg, ham, some kind of cheese and sauce on what appeared to be toasted American bread. I know, what a weeny choice. They even cut the alleged "crust" off the bread. On the other hand it tasted fine, wasn't very big and it only cost $4.00. 

Another thing I found unusual was the plastering of the menu's everywhere. Even in the restrooms. While you were "resting" you could check out all the restaurant had to offer. That was a first for me.    



It wasn't easy to take pictures because there were so many people. There were always people coming up behind you and the sidewalks were not wide. It wasn't easy to frame the shot. There were also many little gift shops. One we went into was down a small set of stairs that led to this subterranean bauble shop. There's apparently enough customer traffic with locals and tourist's to keep these tiny stores in business. 

  
There were things I didn't expect to see.



"Aww Ma! Not deer penis soup again!"

We left here at 10am and were parked at the train station in about 15 minutes. We didn't have to wait long for the train. It was an overcast, foggy morning but the trip in was uneventful and pretty quick. 

I played with some of the pictures. The buildings in the background are dim in the fog I tried to add a bit of contrast and darken the area a bit.

 

 





  

Oh no they're everywhere! Dunkin' Donuts in Chinese!

 

 

 

 

Below is an archway given to the City of Boston from the Chinese city of Taipei (sister cities).

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 A brief video

So that was May 10, 2018. Boston is a collections of windy, small streets. As the legend goes the streets were originally cow paths. I guess that's what happens when you let cattle design your city streets. There's much construction going on. It has changed so much since the 1950's-60's. And this continues to this very day. Every tall, modern looking building was not there when I was a kid.  Still it is a wonderful, compact city chock full of so much. I don't know if I could live downtown but I sure like having it a stones throw away.

 

I'm outta here.