East Village Walking Tour

If you want to know how cool the East Village is, apart from reading this blog there's no better way than by joining an organized walking tour!

When I saw this on Twitter yesterday morning, I knew what I had to do:

Walk & see the Village like never before this morning with our FREE Walking Tour! 11:30am. Meet 131 East 10th. More:https://t.co/CeUVlx8yr3 pic.twitter.com/UoKjVrlAtX

— Astor Place NYC (@AstorPlaceNYC) July 22, 2017

I know Astor Place is outside the East Village-proper, but hey, maybe they're like anthropologists — they might see coolness in things we take for granted!

I arrived at the designated meeting place, St. Mark's Church, at the designated time: 11:30. This was the crowd:

The crowd.

The tour guide was feisty, what we East Villagers call "a real character"!

There were two things she said she wanted us to know: New York was a Dutch colony, not English; and, the ice age brought a lot of stone to what is now Manhattan. She left out the East Village being built on a swamp, but… it's not a geography tour!

From St. Mark's Church, we made our way down Second Avenue, turned right onto St. Mark's Place, and across Third Avenue to Astor Place. I couldn't hear most of what she said — I was in the back of the crowd. Also, I was futzing with my phone a lot of the time!

I left the group as they made their way out of Astor Place, toward Greenwich Village. I have no desire to write about Greenwich Village — I'm not an anthropologist, after all!

#eastvillage #astorplace #secondavenue #stmarksplace #swamp #thirdavenue #tweets #twitter #walkingtours