Xiaoniu 小妞

Last Sunday we made our way to downtown Albany with Amy, Mike and James for the Festival of Nations. It’s an annual cultural festival setup to celebrate the variety of people’s cultures. This was our first time attending. It went okay, but Sue and I both are not sure it was worth doing again. We’ll just have to see how we feel next year.

To avoid traffic and to avoid paying parking fees we parked near the state education building. It is an impressive looking building, especially for a state capital.

Right next door is the Alfred E. Smith building where Mike works.

The A.E. Smith building faces the back of the state capitol building, which itself is an impressive looking building. The capitol is currently being renovated.

The architecture and size of the building is impressive in person. Again, not bad for a state capitol building. Nothing like it would be built these days with money so tight.

The festival took place in the Empire State Plaza convention center, under ground. We made our way down through the Egg.

Underground we were first assaulted by the crowds stuffed into the area below the Egg. This is where all of the food vendors were setup and seeing as it was lunch time the place was busy as a bee hive. We walked around to check out what each vendor had to offer and made our decisions.

I decided to go for something completely unknown to me and get Ukrainian food. I don’t know the names of the food, but the first thing I had was a stuffed cabbage thing and then three pierogi-like things with potato and cheese stuffing. All of it was good. Then I went for some similarly stuffed cabbage thing at the Polish table. That was excellent. They actually ran out of pierogies so I was out of luck there.

Sue and I were disappointed by the offerings from the Chinese and Taiwan people. The Chinese food was pretty much take-out Chinese food. Nothing authentic there. The Taiwanese were even worse; they had very little to offer and again it looked to me like bad take-out. Very disappointing. Everybody else (other than the Italian table with pizza) had something different to offer. Ever had Liberian food? How about Nigerian?

The kids were not being very cooperative and the loud and noisy environment didn’t help. After eating we made our way through the people to the convention center. There was various cultural shows and dancing going on the stage. Around the area were tables setup with cultural stuff to buy. I ended up picking up some of the free travel and tourism stuff from the Taiwan table. They had a lot of free stuff on their table. Everybody else was trying to make money.

After the dancing the stage was filled one by one with contestants for the Miss Festival of Nations. China and Taiwan made it to the last six contestants, but didn’t make it to the top three. Oh well. Here is an awful picture I took while resting my camera on a railing. Not great, but not too bad for a very dark room and a point-n-shoot camera.

On the way out we took a look at the surrounding area. There was some strange ventilation tubes right next to the plaza.

Next door was the Corning Tower; the tallest building in New York outside of New York City. I’ve been to the observation deck once and it offers a great view of the area.

A shot of the Egg from up close. Gives you an idea of how big the place is.

A couple of other towers in the Empire State Plaza.

The Cultural Education Center. This building houses the state library and state museum. The museum is worth a visit, but I’ve never been to the library. I’ll make my way there sooner or later to do some genealogical research. Check out the square cut trees.

On the way back I took another shot of the state capitol. Take a look at the platforms attached to the roof used by people that have the pleasure of fixing the roof. No way. Mike tells me that at one point they had a porta-potty up there. They just took it down. No thanks. A strong wind and you’d be blown off and fall six stories.

That’s all folks.