Arthur Avenue: the real Little Italy and the green Bronx
The Italian Bronx that still works, then the conservatory and the old-growth forest next door. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Arthur Avenue Retail Market
Start in the covered market the city built in 1940 to bring the pushcart sellers indoors. Cheese, cured meat, fresh pasta, a man rolling cigars at the back. Come in the morning, when the stalls are stacked and the regulars are doing the week's shopping.

2. Arthur Avenue & 187th Street
The crossroads of Belmont — the old Italian Bronx that never moved out and never became a theme of itself. Walk both streets: the bread bakery, the pork store, the fishmonger laying out the catch on ice. This is a working neighbourhood, not a re-creation of one.

3. Bronx Zoo (Bronx River Gate)
The southern edge of the great zoo backs onto Belmont; you can look in at the gate without paying. The zoo runs along the Bronx River for the better part of a mile — worth knowing it's there even on a morning when you keep walking north.

4. Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
Inside the Botanical Garden, the great Victorian glasshouse from 1902 — a dome of white iron and curved glass, palms and orchids under it year-round. The best of the garden when the weather outside won't cooperate.

5. The Thain Family Forest
Fifty acres of old-growth woodland inside the garden — the last uncut stand of the forest that covered the whole city, hemlocks and oaks centuries old. Walk the trail down to the Bronx River gorge and the waterfall; you'll forget you're in the Bronx.

6. Botanical Garden (Metro-North)
The Metro-North stop sits at the garden's edge, on the Harlem line. Twenty minutes back to Grand Central — faster and quieter than the subway, and the way the day is meant to end.

Arthur Avenue: the real Little Italy and the green Bronx