Philadelphia Urban Adventures - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Healthy L. H. W. A. M.

We did the Italian Market Immersion Tour! Our guide, Shelly did a great job as she walked us through a beautiful artsy neighborhood before entering the market. She was knowledgeable, kind and made the tour a great experience!

Julie P.

Would highly recommend the Italian Market and Magic Gardens tour. Howard was so friendly and knowledgeable about everything we saw and had great stories to share!

cynthia C.

We had Howard for the Italian Market Tour but it was so much more and we absolutely loved it! His tour started with some wall artwork of a local artist and then progressed to the Italian market, then the Latino market and finally ending at the 2 famous cheesesteak restaurants Geno’s and Pat’s. He had so many stories about the many generations of the families running the stores in the Italian market! And the food we got to sample was absolutely delicious! We had amazing bread, tortillas, Italian candies, candied nuts, cheese, etc. And you can tell that Howard is definitely a foodie as he knows so much about all the foods and restaurants around!

Veronica N.

Nina was an extremely courteous and knowledgeable tour guide! She spent a lot of her life in Philly on and off over the years and her stories really helped the city come to life. Nina made sure we were comfortable, walked in safe and designated areas, and walked into several establishments with us to point out unique items and foods! My boyfriend and I took a tour of the Italian Market area and Nina made sure to point special landmarks and tailored the discussion to our interests. She even bought us fresh bread, a sweet treat and the best tortilla chips we’ve ever had as parting gifts! If given the chance, please take this tour and even better ask if Nina is the tour guide. I promise you will not regret your experience with her. Not only do you learn more about the city, but you also get insight into the immigration patterns that led to such a diverse city population and food culture! Nina is the best and we truly enjoyed our tour!

V&T

Linda S.

My husband and I had the good fortune of doing the Italian Market today with Stephanie as our guide. What an incredibly enjoyable way to spend the morning. Included with the tour was a walk in and around the area leading up to the market which Stephanie did a wonderful job of showing to us and explaining some of the amazing murals and mosaics found in the area. We were actually standing in an alley admiring some of the mosaics and the owner and artist of the mural actually came out and told us about the process that was involved with creating her art. We then travelled through the Italian Market and got to sample some of the food in a number of the local shops. Would absolutely recommend this tour (and Stephanie) without hesitation!

Meghan H.

Chuck was an amazing tour guide! He gave us awesome information about the history of the city and market, and introduced us to shop owners who graciously offered us their time to tell us about their products and history of how their shops came to be. We sampled delicious food, and had time to browse and buy items we wanted. We had a fabulous time. I would definitely book another tour through Urban Adventures!!

Jacy F.

We did a history tour, and a beer tour in the same day. We had Josh S. and Eric respectively. We absolutely loved both tours and guides! We were only in town for a short time and I feel like Josh’s history tour hit the highlights quickly, with lots of added interesting pieces we would’ve missed out on if we had explored ourselves. If you like beer, the tour was awesome. Eric was knowledgeable and he turned our evening into a really fun one. We were sad for the tour to end!

MelanieJPeterson

Italian Market Immersion Tour. Our tour guide, Chuck, really made the tour great! We would not have had such an enjoyable and educational time walking around this part of this City without him leading the way. He shared with us that he is a retired University professor and Philadelphia native. He loves this city and it showed! We learned about the history of one of the oldest markets in the US (over 100 years old) and sampled some items along the way. We also saw street art and learned more about the history of the City, William Penn’s plan for a “utopian” type society and the legendary “curse of William Penn.” The Penn statue on top of City Hall used to be the highest point in Philadelphia until the 1980’s when the mayor alllowed skyscrapers in. The legend goes that after that, all the Philly sports teams had a losing streak until a worker on one of the new tallest buildings added a mini statue of Penn to the top, then the teams started to win again.
On our tour, we sampled...
✅Sesame seed sprinkled fresh bread (with no preservatives)
✅Italian cookie drizzled with chocolate.
✅Italian Lemon Nougat (self purchase)
✅Chocolate covered espresso beans (self purchase)
✅Aged Balsamic Vinegar, Fig Vinegar and Coconut flavored White Balsalmic Vinegar (our choices- each could choose their own to sample)
✅Specialty cheese (can’t remember the name) coupled with spiced cashews
✅ Fresh (made today) Tortilla chips and fresh tomato salsa from a shop where the owners are from Central Mexico
✅Mandarin orange from the produce stand
Bonus: anything we self-purchased, we received an extra 10% off for being on the tour. I also liked that he asked at the beginning of the tour if we had any place to be after so he could be mindful of that. He showed us where the nearest bathrooms were and where to get water/drink if we needed it along the way. This was a big time saver and great since we had kids with us. He was open to answering any questions anyone had and did his best to be sure each person on our tour was enjoying themselves and as engaged as they wanted to be.