Lower East Side walking tours
 

We'd like to join a walking tour of the Lower East Side when we visit NYC at the end of March. A few of you here have recommended Big Onion Tours and Joyce Gold tours, however neither are running a tour to that part of town on the dates we are there (March 24th - March 29th). I've also seen that the Tenement Museum (which we plan to visit) runs tours of the area, but only April-December so we'll just miss it by a couple of days!

Can anyone recommend a company running informative tours of the Lower East Side so I can see if they have availability on my dates?

Many thanks.

Have you tried the Big Apple Greeters?

Thanks for your quick reply!

Yes - I have emailed my request to them, but probably too soon! As I assumed I would be able to find a Lower East Side tour easily enough, I thought I would request a Big Apple Greeter for either Harlem or the 'Greeter's Choice' option (i've heard that you have more chance of being able to get a greeter if you leave the choice to them!). Perhaps I acted too hastily in that and should have requested the Lower East Side instead!

Try www.walknyc.com. They offer tours of the area although I have no experience with them so cannot recommend first hand.

I had a bad experience with Big Apple Greeters because they sent me a greeter who didn't know anything about the neighborhoods I requested -- which I didn't realize until we got to our destination! (She lived in the Upper East Side and we toured Greenwich Village.)

So the "Greeter's Choice" is probably a good idea. I would have been perfectly happy to tour my greeter's neighborhood instead, if only I'd known in in time! My greeter had decades of experience in the garment trades, and I do a lot of sewing myself, so if we had communicated better in advance, I bet an insiders' walking tour of the Garment District would have been another possibility!

As with any volunteer organization, you're going to get a variety of quality.

There's a tour that starts at Katz's deli on Sundays but I can't remember the name of the co. Here's info on some other tour options

http://nycwalk.com/jew1.html

http://nycjewishtours.org/page/o9nb/Jewish_Tours.html

http://www.nycvisit.com/content/index.cfm?pagePkey=441

Does Big Onion have anything? or maybe the Municipal Art Society?

http://www.bigonion.com

http://www.mas.org/Events/tours.cfm