On our trips to New York with a guide we want our travelers to enjoy and soak up the widest variety of sensations and experiences. And new York is like a chapter of The Simpsons, you think you've seen everything and there's always some new one that surprises you, and when you see a repeat one you always find something new that you haven't seen the previous time.
The Manhattan Lower Tour: SOHO, Little Italy and Chinatown, is done on foot with a local guide (who speaks Spanish) and lasts about 3 hours (from 9:30 to 12:30). This tour gives us the opportunity to get to know the area known as Lower Manhattan in detail.
As the name suggests, we'll look at these 3 new York neighborhoods, known as Lower Manhattan: SOHO, Little Italy and Chinatown.
The SOHO neighborhood gained fame in the 1960s and 1970s as the residence of multiple artists, who inhabited the former factories in the form of studios and lofts. He then underwent a gentrification process and the artists made way for the yuppies and the studios became design shops, art galleries and venues of exclusive firms.
Little Italy, needless to say, was the neighborhood where most migrants of Italian origin lived. It is currently more of a tourist district that stands out for its Italian restaurants and bakeries, as well as souvenir shops. In summer the main street, Mulberry Street, is filled with market stalls over the weekend. In September, the San Gennaro festival takes place as a celebration of the neighborhood's origins.
In Chinatown we find the Chinese-majority neighborhood of Manhattan. In addition, there are eight other neighborhoods throughout New York with that name. It is a very populated neighborhood and full of businesses such as tea shops, souvenirs and markets of all kinds. As for the food, you can enjoy typical dishes such as dumplings, handmade noodles or pork buns. A point of interest is Columbus Park, where residents often go to play chess or mahjong and practice tai chi.
This tour is a fixed on our trips to New York. And it is because it allows you to get to know these neighborhoods of the Big Apple with great depth in a reduced time. If we were on our own, not counting the guide, it would take a lot longer to see even one of the neighborhoods and we would also know less about its history because no one would be explaining what we are seeing.