New York Walking Tours

Previously concentrated below Canal Street and populated mostly by Cantonese speakers, the diversity of the new Chinatown reflects large-scale immigration from Fujian province and Taiwan, as well as an influx of Mandarin speakers from the interior provinces of China. In addition, some Vietnamese, as well as a few Tibetans, Malaysians, and Cambodians have made this area in Lower Manhattan home in recent years. As much of what nominally was Little Italy was taken over by fruit and vegetable wholesalers, small restaurants, printing shops and other businesses catering to the community, more apartment-building conversions and turnovers occurred.

For chocolate fans, New York represents paradise on earth, where you can get fine artisanal chocolates, chocolate produced locally in addition to imported Belgian, French and Swiss truffles and nearly everything else chocolate as well. While a number of specialty stores such as Dylan's Candy Bar in Midtown East or bakeries such as City Bakery in the Flatiron District have a fine selection of chocolate goods, we thought it would be fun to create a walking tour that combines some exercise along with serious tastings at some of New York's finest chocolatiers.

If you're interested in taking a walking tour of Queens you have to make a few choices for starters, given the fact that the borough is the largest in New York, and the second largest borough in population behind Brooklyn with 2.2 million residents. To shrink the borough down for the purposes of a walking tour that would be interesting to do and one which could be accomplished in a day, the best advice would be to start in the very heart of Queens in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Fifth Avenue is much more than lifestyles of the rich and famous. It is an architectural treasure trove opposite Central Park, where you will find some the most fashionable apartment buildings, museums, and edifices rich with ornamental designs. This route can easily be reversed, is handicapped accessible, and can even be done by bus. Along the way, we'll mention a few places you can break for lunch.

John Jay Chapman once wrote that "the present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost." With the surge of historic preservation in the last hundred years, Chapman may seem outdated; however New York remains, after all, the city that laid waste to the original Pennsylvania Station—which was every bit as grand, and every bit as magnificent as Grand Central—simply because we needed the space for a new building. The city is constantly reinventing itself, architecturally, with new buildings—some of the most innovative and eye-catching designs this side of Beijing—springing up with alarming frequency. For visitors to New York and the lovers of all things architectural, we’ve created a comprehensive guide to the newest and most intriguing of the current class of buildings sprouting from the granite foundations of the island.

So you're in New York City for the weekend and you're obsessed with shopping and it's literally all you want to do…except maybe take some breaks to eat. Undoubtedly there are far too many districts in the city to do them all in one day, but luckily for you New York is a well organized and well connected city, so if you're uptown and you want to head downtown to check out SoHo, the Village and the Meatpacking District, you can do that without missing all the good bits on the way.