If I've learned anything from all my walks in Manhattan, it's how big the city actually is. You can walk for several hours and think you've explored a decent sized area, but when you trace it out on a map, you discover you've barely begun to cover it. So it was on Saturday when, inspired by Edward Rutherford's fascinating historical fiction 'New York', my daughter and I decided to explore the area south of East Houston Street which incorporates the Lower East Side, Chinatown and Little Italy.