It's Chinatown

It's nice to have someone else plan an outing for you. That was the case when Tommy and Lisa invited us to take the Metro from South Pas to Chinatown on a recent Saturday.

After taking Aki on his very first train ride (on the sparkling and sun-splintered Gold Line), we sprinted over to Empress Pavilion, which was just wrapping up dim-sum for the day, and stuffed our faces with all kinds of goodies like sticky rice, shumai, and spare ribs.




Picky? Or a one-track mind?



It was Aki's first time on the train, and even though it's not really a "choo-choo" train (his favorite book right now is Freight Train by Donald Crewes), he seemed to love riding the Metro as much as he enjoys the reading about good old steam trains.


Tommy orders...

Ah, dim sum. The only drawback this time around was the sticker shock: Since when have we ever spent more than forty bucks on dim-sum?! Either there was some kind of error, we were ripped off, or we ate so fast we didn't see everything we ate. Definitely a possibility!


...and Aki approves!

Afterward, we strolled around Chinatown in the sunlight (this week's Old Testament rain storm hadn't yet set in), and ducked down an alley we'd never walked before, which was lined with shops selling knick-knacks and knock-offs on the cheap. It reminded us of any number of cheap little markets all over the world, and was a perfect way to walk off some of that no-MSG-added goodness.


Back alley shopping in Chinatown

As we've mentioned before, South Pas is one of our favorite places to either wind a day up or down. We hopped off the train at the South Pas stop, chit-chatted with a Dad ramming a Twinkie down his happy son's throat while we sipped java at Kaldi's, then strolled over to where we'd parked by the library. A perfect day? Pretty much. Thanks, Tommy and Lisa!