Spring arrived in New York this week (up to 20° C!) although it feels like just yesterday we were celebrating New Year. Oh wait, that was actually just one month ago.
On February 14, 2010, the Chinese celebrated the new Year of the Tiger. When you live in New York, you don't need to travel around the world to experience that celebration up close. We hadn't visited Chinatown before (I know, after more than one year in New York - can you believe how busy we are?) but in hindsight, I think we made the right call to wait until Chinese New Year to wander through this particular Manhattan neighborhood. 
February 14th was one of those typical cold but beautiful New York winter days - sunny with a crisp blue sky, a perfect day for a new year's celebration. Unlike us silly Western people, who spent the night on cold Times Square waiting for countdown, the Chinese celebrate new year during the day. Confetti and dragons colored Chinatown red, a beautiful sight! Every Chinese bought confetti cannons which resulted into an explosion of color in the streets (much safer than our fireworks tradition btw).
After our Chinese new year celebration, we accidentally walked into Little Italy, which is right next to Chinatown. Since our stomachs couldn't handle Chinese food that day (after a night out celebrating Anti-Valentine's Day but that's another story), we decided to try one of New York's pizza institutions: Lombardi's. As with most famous restaurants in New York, we had to wait (40 minutes)... but then again, the crowd was there for a reason. The pizza's were indeed very good (approved by some of our Italian friends btw, so they should know good pizza!). Pizza on Chinese New Year, maybe we should start a new tradition?
