Cultural day: Nolita + LES

Here's a new tour to add to my great collection of guided tours around NY (the first two were in Chelsea and Williamsburg). Always curated by my super tuned guides Ana Strumpf and Gisela Gueiros. The objective was mainly to stroll around Nolita and the Lower East Side of Manhattan to understand a little bit more of those so cool neighborhoods and discover some of the trendiest and most interesting stores around. 

If you've had the opportunity to walk around the region, you've probably noticed the amount of different stores, restaurants, cafes that are concentrated in just a few blocks. And, at least for me, it is very difficult to know what is worth looking at or not, unless someone points the right places. I found fascinating to see those kind of new lifestyle concept stores where they sell a little bit of everything (from shoes, to soaps and what not). Since I know that I don't have the right "eye" for that, I need a little help on that matter and it was great.

So our tour today started in Nolita with a nice brunch at one of the local cafe/restaurant called Bread, and then we headed to all sort of cool stores:

• Creatures of Comfort

Picture below: panel made by Confetti System

• Le Labo - a fragrance store in which you can find the "Gramercy Hotel" perfume for instance

• Aesop - skin/hair products from Australia, using only natural components. I bought a little set to test their products, but the coolest thing in the store is the design. The walls are all made of thousands of newspapers piled up. 

• Love, Adorned - lifestyle concept store
• John Derian - very charming home-accessories store 

• Doyle & Doyle - vintage jewelry 
• Tommy Guns - we passed in front of this really cool hairdresser of the Lower East Side.
• Moscot - a New York institution. It's one of the oldest optical shops in Manhattan. It's been managed by the same family for four generations now and they sell all kind of vintage frames. The store looks like a museum. 

• Tenement Museum store - the museum tells the story of immigrants and how they lived when they arrived in Manhattan. Most of them first settled in the Lower East Side of the island. We didn't have time to take a tour, but it's definitely in my priority list of things to visit in the city. The shop is a great place to find nice souvenirs of New York (not as cheesy as the ones sold in Times Square).
• Earnest Sewn - trendy clothing store, specialized in high-end jeans.

We also entered the Sperone Westwater Gallery, mainly to see the design of the building. The gallery was projected by the English architect Norman Foster and is worth the visit. 

We finished the tour in the middle of the Lower East Side, with a nice cup of coffee, surrounded by amazing pictures from Michael Halsband, at Lost Weekend - a new concept of coffee shop that is also an art gallery (hence the exhibition) and sells lifestyle accessories (like hair products, books and bags).