August 25th & 26th, 2023
It was our last full day in NYC before flying out. We were going to head to the Chelsea neighborhood where my friend Allan had lived. I was glad that I checked to see if my friend’s favorite Vietnamese restaurant (Co Ba) was still open along with my favorite kitchen supply store in Chelsea Market. Both of them had closed. We decided to check out a few stores in the Bowery Neighborhood and to head over to China Town and Little Italy.
We spent most of the day wandering through neighborhoods and looking at restaurants. We did stop at bakery in Little Italy to have piece of cake and something to drink before we headed back to a restaurant that was close to the hotel that I wanted to try.
Not the most exciting day but it was enjoyable!
The following morning before heading to the airport, we walked down to Times Square so that Sophon could get a meal at Jollibee. On the way, I noticed that Joe’s Pizza that normally has a line, didn’t have a line. I grabbed a couple of slices for my lunch before heading to Jollibee for Sophon to get his fried chicken with gravy and a biscuit lunch.
I got an uber to drop us off at Penn Station and was surprised when I looked across the street and Hotel Pennsylvania was gone. I had done a project at that hotel back in the late 80s. Back then it was called the New York Penta. After I got back home, I realized that I had read something about Penn Station and the hotel being demolished and turned into something else. Part of me felt sad, while I worked on the project I learned that when the hotel opened in the early 1900’s, it was the world’s largest hotel. Not just New York’s largest hotel but the largest hotel in the world.
Even when I worked there, it was hard to picture the hotel in its former glory. It had been sold and resold and went by a lot of different names and sad that it was finally decided to tear it down.
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