New York’s Best Guided Tours
April 9th, 2009
Evidenced by the fact that you can fly into either JFK Airport, LaGuardia Airport, or Newark Airport, New York City can be a particularly daunting vacation destination. As a new visitor to the city, you face a conundrum: on one hand, you don’t want to venture into the outer-borough wilds on your own, but on the other hand it gets expensive to cough up fifty bucks for narrated tours around such landmarks as Times Square, Chelsea, Washington Square, the Theater District, Madison Square Garden, Columbia University, and the Upper West Side. The following excursions are your salvation, offering unique New York experience for the wizened tourist. They are, simply, guided tours that don’t suck.
The Municipal Art Society of New York’s Walking Tours: Local Culture According to the Experts
The MAS’s walking tours offer a range of experiences for the curious tourist, including visits to oft-ignored outer-borough attractions and historians’ views of Manhattan’s architectural development. Witness undeveloped New York on a tour of Queens’ Willets Point, characterized by the MAS’s website as a, “hardscrabble area of auto junkyards and related businesses that has twice beaten back attempts at redevelopment,” tour a paragon of urban renewal in Brooklyn’s “New Williamsburg Waterfront,” or stick to the relative basics on a walk through historical “Radical Greenwich Village.” Whichever route you choose, you’ll encounter authentic New York through the lenses of some of its most learned inhabitants. In keeping with the MAS’s mission “to promote a more livable city,” these walking tours offer tourists a glimpse of the city’s thriving culture and ongoing development.
HUSH Hip Hop Tours: A Guided Foray into New York’s Arts Communities
HUSH’s aptly-named bus tours offer a hip-hop experience according to the landmarks; visitors can choose from the “Pioneers” tour of Harlem and the Bronx, the “Rapper’s Row” tour of Queens, and the “Where Brooklyn At?” tour of, well, Brooklyn. In keeping with its mission to communicate authenticity to its patrons, HUSH promises opportunities to “meet, greet and be guided by hip hop legends like Grandmaster Caz, Kurtis Blow, Raheim, Reggie Reg and an assortment of others.” Guests can expect the unique treat of live entertainment, and ambitious visitors can also partake in walking tours of the famed neighborhoods or the occasional Graffiti tour. A wary visitor has only to visit HUSH’s website for customer reviews; these tours are overwhelmingly well-received for their informational and amusing qualities.
Circle Line’s Other Tours: Speed-Boating and Boozing Abound
The harbor cruise is a popular notion for New York’s visitors, and the Circle Line is the city’s most trusted purveyor of basic aquatic experiences. In addition to their “humorous, yet informative” semi-circle and full-island tours, the company offers the more entertaining options of an evening booze cruise and a quickie speedboat tour, both affordable at $27 and $19, respectively. The “Harbor Lights” evening cruise offers its patrons views of Liberty and Ellis Islands, the East River’s bridges, and Midtown’s most famous skyscrapers, while the speedboat tour boasts a vessel called the “Beast,” complete with a gaping maw. Put simply, the harbor cruise is still a great way to enjoy the city’s best vistas, though you might want to do it with a drink in your hand. Or really fast.
NBC Studio Tours: A Classic Choice for the TV-Loving Tourist
While this tour charts familiar territory, its sights are still undeniably exciting. Visitors to the famed 30 Rock gain entrée to the base camps of Conan, the Today Show, and Saturday Night Live, among several others. In addition to its basic studio tour, NBC offers package deals for its patrons that include a complete tour of Rockefeller Center and an On-Location bus tour of Manhattan’s television and movie sites. The studio tour also gains points for sheer convenience: it runs every 30 minutes during business hours on weekdays and every 15 on weekends. While it may be nearly impossible to get a group of SNL standby tickets, NBC assures that you can still witness some genuine backstage action on your New York vacation.
New York Culinary Tours: Eat Your Way through the City’s Ethnic Enclaves
As the website advertises, the aim of New York Culinary Tours is to venture “beyond the tourist track” into the city’s culturally representative neighborhoods. Patrons can opt for well-known culinary mainstays like Chinatown and Little Italy or venture into the outer boroughs for new tastes. For the adventurous foodie, a tour of Queens’ Astoria promises the city’s most authentic Greek cuisine and Turkish coffee. Additionally, Brooklyn’s Sunset Park is one of New York’s most diverse areas, hosting an array of South and Central American and Chinese eateries. These tours are the surest way to fully experience the cultural variety that defines New York, especially for the wayfarer who is willing to stray from Manhattan’s beaten paths.
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Categories: Things to Do
