Flushing Meadows: the park of two World's Fairs
The steel globe, the rusting Tent of Tomorrow, and a model of the whole city under one roof. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Mets–Willets Point
Step off the 7 and walk in past Citi Field on your right. The bridge over the rail yards drops you straight into the park the two World's Fairs left behind, in 1939 and again in 1964.

2. The Unisphere
The 1964 fair's centrepiece and the thing everyone comes for — a twelve-storey steel globe ringed by fountains, built by US Steel and never taken down. Stand in the plaza and look up; it's bigger than every photograph makes it.

3. New York State Pavilion
The other 1964 survivor, just south — Philip Johnson's 'Tent of Tomorrow' towers, all rust and open sky now, the cable roof long gone. They've been on the edge of demolition for decades; go while they're still standing.

4. Queens Museum & the Panorama
Inside the one fair building still in use is the Panorama of the City of New York — a hand-built scale model of all five boroughs, every block, every building, made for the 1964 fair and kept up since. The best half-hour in the park.

5. New York Hall of Science
The science museum, west across the park, in another fair building. Skip the inside if it's not your thing, but the rockets standing in the yard out front are free to look at and unexpectedly moving.

6. Flushing–Main St
End by walking east out of the park and into Flushing proper — one of the great Chinatowns of the city, dense and entirely its own. The 7 terminates here under the crowds; the food is the reason to arrive hungry.

Flushing Meadows: the park of two World's Fairs