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  Discover Chicago at your own pace: the best self‑guided walking tours If you’re new to Chicago and eager to explore the city beyond the usual tourist snapshots,  CityWalksSpaces  collection of 13 self‑guided walking tours  stands out for its clarity, depth, and originality.  It offers one of the most thoughtful and practical introductions to the city, making it an ideal starting point for anyone wanting to understand Chicago’s character, history, and neighborhoods on foot. Why these walks are perfect for newcomers 1. A friendly introduction to Chicago’s story Before you even start walking, the site provides a rich, accessible overview of Chicago’s origins—from Jean Baptiste Point du Sable’s first settlement to the city’s explosive growth after the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the rebuilding that followed the Great Fire of 1871. This context helps newcomers appreciate the layers of history they’ll encounter on each route. 2. Practical tips for navigating the...

  (texte en français ci-dessous) Philadelphia 16000 alleys Walking around Philadelphia, you'll quickly realize that the city is full of small alleys that, when well-maintained, are incredibly charming. According to a 2025 report, there are 16,000 of them which once served as shortcuts for local residents or provided access to the shops located on the ground floor of the buildings. While those in the city center, often shaded, serve as pedestrian walkways between beautiful houses, most are in a sorry state: filled with trash, overgrown with vegetation, and blocked by illegal barriers. The city wants to revitalize them to improve the appeal of the neighborhoods where they are located, and this will undoubtedly require significant cleaning and renovation work. In the meantime, if you follow the self-guided tours of Walk in Philadelphia, you'll have the opportunity to explore some of the most beautiful ones. The best known is probably Elfreth's Alle...

(texte en français ci-dessous) The 16 intricate floors of The Vessel, Hudson Yards, NYC The Vessel at Hudson Yards in New York City is located at the start of  Walk in NYC # 4, the High Line Hudson River stroll. Open to the public in March 2019, it is made of interconnected stairs on 16 floors; its platforms overlook the skyscrapers that have also emerged in this place at about the same time, and on the Hudson River in the distance, behind the subway depot that gives its name to the place. Its particular shape has also made it compared to a M. C. Escher drawing and it's the creation of British designer Thomas Heatherwick. Its metal pieces have been built in Italy. At the beginning, entry was free as long as you had a reserved time slot, then it was closed following some suicides, and then it reopened with new rules that didn't prevent another suicide. It is now open again with safety barriers and an entry fee with mandatory advanced reservation...

(texte en français ci-dessous) In Boston, 7 colorful sculptures by Okuda San Miguel If you follow the Walk in Boston # 8 (see link below), you will necessarily cross Seaport Boulevard in the neighborhood of the same name, so forget the suggested route for a moment and walk along the street. On the median strip, there will be the 7 sculptures of the public art project Air, Sea, Earth created especially for the place by Okuda San Miguel. Spanish, contemporary, influenced by graffiti and street arts, his style is instantly recognizable when you have seen it once. It often highlights the contradictions of existence and the impossible meeting of the wild and the built, which surely explains the choice of this artist to decorate this area. And built, this district has been over the past 10 years! It was previously mainly open-air parking spaces and abandoned industrial buildings or, if we go back further in time, a large trading center where commercial sailing ships and trains from the west ...

  (texte en français ci-dessous) The H. Washington Public Library, Chicago When you see it from the street, it appears as a huge cube of granite and red bricks, an imposing but somewhat dull building that occupies an entire city block. You will have to look up at its roof to see original metal decorations that may begin to arouse your curiosity. They are owls, symbols of the wisdom that awaits you inside. Once you have pushed open its entrance doors, you can only be amazed by the splendor of the place. The terrazzo floors are superb, the geometric decorations echo the geometric layout of the place, the escalators in wooden structures make you want to take them instead of the elevator. Each floor has its specialty, its worktables, its particular lighting, its art exhibitions and without having to borrow books, you can easily spend an hour there looking at everything. Do not miss the glass roof/winter garden on the 9th floor, a calm and bright place where you can find armchairs to s...

(texte en français ci-dessous) Hindu Temple & more places of worship, Flushing, Queens, NYC You know you're near the Hindu Temple Society of North America when you start seeing women in saris or men in turbans on the sidewalk in front of you. They weren't there when you got out of the subway station in Flushing but suddenly, they appear. This Hindu temple, made of granite and completed in 1977, is the second oldest in the USA and it attracts many worshipers. Dedicated to Ganesha whose representations you can see on the facade, it is in fact just one of the many places of worship in Flushing. Before it, and if you follow Walk in NYC # 18, the best of Flushing and Corona, a self-guided tour that explores this part of NYC, you will have visited a synagogue and then there will be two Buddhist temples, not to mention other places that you will pass by without stopping. Why this abundance in Flushing? Simply because the city was founded on the pr...

(texte en français ci-dessous) Get lucky in Boston Want to get lucky in Boston? You just have to find the Good Luck plaque at North Station and put your hand on it. I won't tell you where it is exactly as it's part of the quest, but I can tell you that one day, I was leaving the commuter rail when I saw people make a detour and put their hand on it, so I got curious and here is what I found: the plaque bears the name of Red Auerbach, a famous NBA coach that allowed the Boston Celtics to win many times in the past. North Station being under the TD Garden Stadium where the Celtics play, it makes sense that the plaque is there, especially because the clover is the emblem of the Celtics. at first, it was not clear whether you ask for luck for the Celtics when you touch it, or luck for yourself, and what was also unusual is that this clover is a regular one, not the 4-leaf one, but I got the answers when asking on Facebook about it. Maks Tlg told me that...

  (texte en français ci-dessous) The 37 iconic Chicago bridges Chicago is a city of about two and a half million people and even if they are not all concentrated in the city center, it is easy to imagine that there is a lot of traffic there. However, about forty times a year between April and November and except during rush hour, this traffic stops from one street to another along the river. This is the time when the bascule bridges open to let pass sailboats and other large boats that want to go on the lake from their garages or come back. This has been going on for almost two hundred years because the first Chicago bridge, made of wood, was built in 1834. In the past, each had an operator day and night in towers located at their entrance because boats could request passage at any time and had precedence over road traffic. There were 37 such bridges along the Calumet and Chicago rivers but today, they are not all in operation because river traffic is now limited to construction b...

(texte en français ci-dessous) Take a cable car in NYC As unbelievable as it seems, you can really take a cable car in New York! You just have to go to 59th Street on 2nd Ave and you will find the station where you can take one of the two trams that go from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island. Built in 1973 to compensate for the delay in the construction of the metro that was supposed to go to the island, they remained in operation after that with more or less long interruptions and changes of cabins over the years. To take one, it will only cost you the price of a metro ticket and as they operate very regularly and can carry 110 people each, the wait should not be too long. You'll go over the East River and see the mighty Roosevelt Bridge that goes to Queens. You'll also have great views of Manhattan and then you'll arrive to a haven of peacefulness compared to where you started. If you are looking for a quiet spot to picnic, the parks along the river could well answer your ques...

(texte en français ci-dessous) The Gloden Stairs | Boston immigration Even if Ellis Island in New York harbor is the symbol of immigration to the USA during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Boston was at that time the second point of entry into American territory. There were up to 8 landing wharfs for passenger boats coming from Europe, each with its immigration station and federal agents going from one to another to check papers and administer medical tests. That of Grand Junction in East Boston - where Piers Park is now, was the most important and it is therefore also in East Boston that you can still find the most remnants of this activity. First, the explanatory panels located at Piers Park and Navy Fuel Park which give you an overview of what immigration was like at the time (see the photos at the end of the post). Then, along Marginal Street and opposite to Piers Park 2, the Immigrant House whose name you will still find on the facade if you look up at t...

  (texte en français ci-dessous) NYC: 17,000 water tanks If you go to New York, it's obviously not for the water tanks that adorn the roofs of the city. You will however only need to spend a day there to see them everywhere. You may even get attached to them and start looking for them when you are in places where the buildings are more than 6 floors high. Despite their sometimes decrepit air and their astonishing wooden structure, they are still in activity. Three family-owned companies have shared the market for about a century and continue to install or maintain them. There are even some in the skyscrapers - although more modern and made of steel, but you don't see them because they are hidden in the structure. The One World Center has sixteen, for example, located at different heights of the tower to allow their filling in stages. Like all the others, they ensure that the floors above the sixth have running water. Below, the water coming from reservoirs to the north of the...