How to See a City Through New Eyes

Looking for a fun, new way to see a city? Why not create your own walking tour?!

Sound complicated? Well, it really isn’t.

You can do one of two things:

1. Either visit a city the same old boring way everyone else does and hit all of the standard tourist attractions;
   OR
2. Take (or create) a walking tour based on a favorite TV show or movie. (This is known as pop-culture tourism.)

I did this and had a BLAST!

A friend of mine and I made plans to go to New York City for a weekend.  I had been to the “Big Apple” before and saw the obligatory tourist spots such as the Empire State Building, Times Square, etc.  It was fun and satisfied my “inner tourist.”  However, this time, I wanted to tour it in a different way but I wasn’t sure how to go about it.

So, like everyone else these days, I went online and started searching.

Lo and behold, I found what I didn’t even know I was looking for: a self-guided “Sex & The City” walking tour.  (This type of tour is also known as “pop culture tourism.”)

The self-guided walking tour I discovered online came complete with a list of places featured on the show, their addresses, and a map of their locations in Manhattan.  How fun! I was very excited, as both my friend and I were big fans of the show.

We started out taking the subway to some of the places, but found that we saw and experienced more by walking (plus it was really good exercise).

The tour was fun and took us all over Manhattan to places shown on the TV series – parts of the city that I hadn’t seen during my previous trip.

The “Sex and the City” self-guided walking tour included stops at:

Carrie’s brownstone
245 E. 73^rd Street

Magnolia Bakery
11^th & Bleeker Street

Jimmy Choo Shoes

The Boathouse Restaurant
Central Park

Manolo Blahnik
31 West 54^th Street (between 5^th & 6^th)

Tao (a famous sushi restaurant)
58^th & Madison

The New York Public Library
5^th Avenue East & 42^nd Street

---

Other Ideas for Self-Guided Tours:

• TV Shows:
  • Blue Bloods  – NYC
  • Chicago Fire, Chicago PD – Chicago, IL
  • House of Cards – Washington, DC
• Movies:
  • A Good Year – Provence, France
  • Angels & Demons – Italy 
  • Casino Royale – The Bahamas; Italy; U.K.
  • The DaVinci Code – Italy
  • The Departed – Boston, Massachusetts
  • Eat Pray Love – New York City, NY; Italy; India; Indonesia
  • French Kiss – Sites in France
  • Mystic River – Boston, Massachusetts
  • P.S., I Love You – New York City, Ireland
  • Under the Tuscan Sun – Rome, Italy; Tuscany, Italy