We wanted to expand on our reply to Alyssa’s question on Wednesday about the framed map shown below.
The piece in the white frame is a card from the City Walks: New York boxed set. City Walks are compact boxed collections that each include 50 “adventures on foot” for a particular city. Every card presents a self-contained walking tour with a map, step-by-step directions and interesting background about landmarks and neighborhoods you’ll pass along the way.
I received the New York edition as a gift when I moved there, and after we moved to Richmond I wasn’t sure what to do with the cards. While decorating our first apartment on a budget, we realized the cards made inexpensive and meaningful artwork. Each roughly 4×6 card fit perfectly in inexpensive white frames from IKEA, so we arranged several in a simple collage for our dining room.
We selected eight cards that represent parts of New York that were meaningful to us — neighborhoods we’d lived in, places we’d worked, spots we loved — and those framed cards have traveled with us ever since we first hung them two years ago. They’ve moved around a lot, but they’ve always been an easy way to display a personal connection to the city.
City Walks offers editions for many cities including Washington, D.C., Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Paris, London, Rome, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Vancouver. There are kid-friendly versions and a few themed “Village Walks” for smaller regions such as Tuscany, Provence and Ireland. These boxed sets typically retail for around $15, which amounts to roughly 30 cents per card if you use them as small pieces of art. And if anyone from City Walks is listening, we’d happily help design a City Walks: Richmond edition.