The Great 4th of July Festival 2010

Remember when we blogged about going to Coney Island to watch the Nathan's 4th of July Hot Dog eating competition last year? Well, it's the 4th of July weekend again (boy, the year just flew by, didn't it?) but we decided against going to Coney Island this year. It was just way too hot to be standing among thousands of people in the heat, just waiting to watch some hot dog eating competition. So, we decided to head out to the city instead.

We wanted to go check out a street fair and found out that there were quite a few going on all over the city. At last, we decided to check out the Great 4th of July Festival since it was located pretty close to the WTC PATH station (that's our usual PATH train station). They blocked off part of Water St, the blocks between Fulton and Broad St. By the time we arrived, the street festival was already winding down. That was a good thing actually, cos there wasn't as many people and we didn't have to push thru crowds just to walk around.

Just like any good street fair, you could find almost anything for sale there. It was a shoppers paradise for us ladies. There were stall after stall of really cheap summer dresses, hats, sunglasses, various types of bags....even pashmina scarfs! 5 pashmina scarfs for only $20! That's really cheap! All the clothes and accessories stalls reminds me somewhat of the markets in Bali or Phuket :P

You could also find all kinds of music on sale. Carribean music, hip hop, oldies...it was just an eclectic mix of everything! Pretty cool though. Apart from music, there were also all types of artwork and handicraft for sale. We saw this really big and cool oil painting of the NYC skyline for sale in one of the stalls. We thought that it would look really cool hanging behind our sofa back at our apartment. When we asked the guy how much it cost and he said $270! Wow! I guess those stuff don't come cheap. Even if it includes framing, it's still a little bit too expensive for us :P

The highlight of all the street fairs that we go to is of course....the FOOD! All the carnival/street fair food stalls were out in full force. Cheese steaks, Italian sausages, funnel cakes, deep fried oreos, corn dogs...the list just goes on and on. They even had some cheap ethnic food on sale..like $1 Pad Thais and $3 for a big pack of banana fritters. We could smell those yummy roasted sweet corn a block away! They were that good! You could get all kinds of toppings for it, from regular butter, honey butter, salt, Parmesan cheese to pepper flakes and lemon juice!

After walking under the scorching sun for nearly an hour, we stopped by this Smoothie stall to cool ourselves down. There are all kinds of fruit smoothies to choose from. They had the regular strawberry, kiwi, watermelon, banana smoothies to exotic flavors like mango, passion fruit and lychee! Oh, they even have bubble tea! We shared a jumbo size mango smoothie ($6) and it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! No additional sugar was added, just pure mango! I think that guy used close to 2 large mangoes for our drink! It was really thick and good =) From the Great 4th of July Festival on Water St, we walked further down to the South Street Seaport area to check out the Puma City NY World Cup event. Will blog more about it in the next post!