New York City Travel Guide - Welcome to New York
New York City Travel Guide - Welcome to New York
New York City is the most populous city in the United States. It lies at the mouth of the Hudson River in the southernmost part of the state, which is part of the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. New York City is a center for media, culture, food, fashion, art, research, finance, and trade. It has one of the largest and most famous skylines on earth, dominated by the iconic Empire State Building.
New York City consists of five boroughs, which are five separate counties. Each borough has a unique culture and could be a large city in its own right. Within each borough individual neighborhoods, some several square miles in size, and others only a few blocks in size, have personalities lauded in music and film. Where you live, work, and play in New York says something to New Yorkers about who you are.
The five New York boroughs
Manhattan: The famous island between the Hudson and East Rivers, with many diverse and unique neighborhoods. Manhattan is home to the Empire State Building in Midtown, Central Park, Times Square, Wall Street, Harlem, and the trendy neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and SoHo.
Brooklyn: The most populous borough, and formerly a separate city. Located south and east of Manhattan across the East River. Known for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Prospect Park, The Brooklyn Museum, The New York Aquarium and a key NYC landmark Coney Island.
Queens: Located to the east of Manhattan, across the East River, and north, east, and south of Brooklyn. With over 170 languages spoken, Queens is the most ethnically diverse region in the United States, and one of the most diverse in the world.
Bronx: Located north of Manhattan Island, the Bronx is home to the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Gardens, and the New York Yankees professional baseball team.
Staten Island: A large island in New York Harbor, south of Manhattan and just across the narrow Kill Van Kull from New Jersey. Unlike the rest of New York City, Staten Island has a suburban character. It is known as the borough of parks. It has its own baseball team, several malls, and a zoo.
New York Climate
New York City has a humid subtropical climate and experiences all four seasons, with hot and humid summers (Jun-Sep), cool and dry autumns (Sep-Dec), cold winters (Dec-Mar), and wet springs (Mar-Jun). Average highs for January are around 38°F (3°C) and average highs for July are about 84°F (29°C). However, temperatures in the winter can go down to as low as 0°F (-18°C) or even lower and in the summer, temperatures can go as high as 100°F (38°C) or slightly higher. The temperature in any season is quite variable and it is not unusual to have a sunny 60°F (16°C) day in January followed by a snowy 25°F (-3°C) day.
A lot to see in New York city
Statue of Liberty National Monument
Central Park
Empire State Building
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rockefeller Center
Brooklyn Bridge
Theatre District
Times Square
The High Line
Grand Central Terminal
One World Trade Center
The Museum of Modern Art
9/11 Memorial
Broadway
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Bryant Park
SoHo, Manhattan
Coney Island
Battery Park
Chinatown
Greenwich Village
Chrysler Building
St. Patrick's Cathedral
Prospect Park
Flatiron Building
American Museum of Natural History
Madison Square Garden
Washington Square Park
Bronx Zoo
DUMBO
Little Italy
Staten Island Ferry
Lower East Side
Chelsea Market
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Radio City Music Hall
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Union Square, Manhattan
New York Botanical Garden
Financial District
Central Park Zoo
Top of the Rock
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Met Cloisters
Liberty Island
East Village
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Bethesda Terrace
Manhattan Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge Park
Brooklyn Bridge
Moving around New York
Most of NYC is laid out in a grid. By convention, Manhattan is spoken of as if it runs north to south (it's actually northeast to southwest), with streets running east and west and avenues running north and south. This makes it relatively easy and straightforward to find your way. Streets are numbered (except in downtown Manhattan) and the numbering rises as you go north. Most avenues are numbered from east to west (so First Ave is east of Second, etc.) below 59th St. Building numbering on avenues starts at the south end of the avenue and rises as you move north, while building numbering on streets starts at Fifth Ave (for the most part - see below) and increases as you go east or west crosstown.
For shorter distances, there is no better way of getting around New York than hitting the sidewalk. If you use the subway or buses, you will almost certainly need to walk to and from stations or stops. In all areas of New York a traveler is likely to visit, all streets have wide, smoothly-paved sidewalks. For long distances, walking is also fine and a great way to see the city.
To ride the buses and subways in NYC it's most likely you'll need a MetroCard from The Metropolitan Transit Authority or MTA for use on the New York City bus and subway systems. While it is possible to pay bus fares using exact change (coins only), you must have a MetroCard to enter the subway system. PATH can be used to travel within Manhattan, from 33rd St along 6th Ave to Christopher St, and for less than the subway due to fare hike proposals from the MTA. It covers such a small territory but in theory you can use it if you have to travel its exact route.
Even in Manhattan, with its dense subway network, buses can often be the best way of making a cross-town (i.e. east-west) journey, for example, crossing Central Park to go from the Metropolitan Museum to the Museum of Natural History. And outside peak hours, a ride by bus from the tip of Manhattan at Battery Park to Midtown is a good and cheap way of taking in the sights.
The Staten Island Ferry, runs from Battery Park in southern Manhattan to Staten Island. The ferry carries passengers and bicycles only, runs every 30 minutes during rush hours, and is free (so don't be fooled by con artists trying to sell "advance tickets"). Not only does the ferry provide a means of transport, but it offers an amazing view of the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor on its way.
Wandering New York
Manhattan possesses the lion's share of the landmarks that have saturated American popular culture. Starting in Lower Manhattan, perhaps the most famous of these landmarks is easy to spot - the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the nation standing atop a small island in the harbor, and perhaps also the most difficult attraction to access in terms of crowds and the long lines to see it. Nearby Ellis Island preserves the site where millions of immigrants completed their journey to America. Within Lower Manhattan itself, Wall Street acts as the heart of big business being the home of the New York Stock Exchange, although the narrow street also holds some historical attractions, namely Federal Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States. Nearby, the National September 11 Memorial at the World Trade Center Site commemorates the victims of that fateful day. The 1776 foot tall One World Trade Center is the spiritual successor to the fallen Twin Towers and is now the tallest skyscraper in both New York and the United States. Connecting Lower Manhattan to Downtown Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Bridge offers fantastic views of the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines.
Moving north to Midtown, Manhattan's other major business district, you'll find some of New York's most famous landmarks. The Empire State Building looms over it all as the second-tallest building in the city, with the nearby Chrysler Building also dominating the landscape. Nearby is the headquarters of United Nations overlooking the East River and Grand Central Terminal, one of the busiest train stations in the world. Also nearby is the main branch of the New York Public Library, a beautiful building famous for its magnificent reading rooms and the lion statues outside the front door; and Rockefeller Plaza, home to NBC Studios, Radio City Music Hall, and (during the winter) the famous Christmas Tree and Skating Rink.
Still in the Midtown area but just to the west, in the Theater District, is the tourist center of New York: Times Square, filled with bright, flashing video screens and LED signs running 24 hours a day. Just to the north is Central Park, with its lawns, trees and lakes popular for recreation and concerts.
New York has some of the finest museums in the world. All the public museums, notably the Metropolitan Museum, which are run by the city, accept donations for an entrance fee, but private museums, especially the Museum of Modern Art, can be very expensive. In addition to the major museums, hundreds of small galleries are spread throughout the city, notably in neighborhoods like Chelsea and Williamsburg. Many galleries and museums in New York close on Mondays, so be sure to check hours before visiting.
New York City is home to some of the finest art museums in the country, and in Manhattan, you'll find the grandest of them all. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park has vast holdings that represent a series of collections, each of which ranks in its category among the finest in the world. Within this single building you'll find perhaps the world's finest collection of American artwork, period rooms, thousands of European paintings including Rembrandts and Vermeers, the greatest collection of Egyptian art outside Cairo, one of the world's finest Islamic art collections, Asian art, European sculpture, medieval and Renaissance art, antiquities from around the ancient world, and much, much more. As if all that wasn't enough, the Metropolitan also operates The Cloisters, located in Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, houses a collection of medieval art and incorporates elements from five medieval French cloisters and other monastic sites in southern France in its renowned gardens.
Near the Metropolitan, in the Upper East Side, is the Guggenheim Museum. Although more famed for its architecture than the collection it hosts, the spiraling galleries are ideal for exhibiting art works. Also nearby is the Whitney Museum of American Art, with a collection of contemporary American art. In Midtown, the Museum of Modern Art(MoMA), holds the most comprehensive collection of modern art in the world, and is so large as to require multiple visits to see all of the works on display, which include Van Gogh's Starry Night and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, as well as an extensive industrial design collection. Midtown is also home to the Paley Center for Media, a museum dedicated to television and radio, including a massive database of old shows. Unknown to some Harlem, previously known as the black mecca of the Americas, is the home of important landmarks of New York City such as the Apollo Theater and 125th. You will also find the Studio Museum and contemporary art galleries such as Tatiana Pagés Gallery.
In Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Museum of Art is the city's second largest art museum with excellent collections of Egyptian art, Assyrian reliefs, 19th-century American art, and art from Africa and Oceania, among other things. Long Island City in Queens is home to a number of art museums, including the PS1 Contemporary Art Center, an affiliate of the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of the Moving Image, which showcases movies and the televisual arts.
In New York City, no museum holds a sway over children like the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Containing the Hayden Planetarium, incredible astronomy exhibits, animal dioramas, many rare and beautiful gems and mineral specimens, anthropology halls, and one of the largest collections of dinosaur skeletons in the world, this place offers plenty of stunning sights. Near Times Square in the Theater District, the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum takes up a pier on the Hudson River, with the aircraft carrier Intrepid docked here and holding some incredible air and space craft. Over in the Flushing district of Queens, on the grounds of the former World's Fair, is the New York Hall of Science, which incorporates the Great Hall of the fair and now full of hands-on exhibits for kids to enjoy.
Though the image many people have of Manhattan is endless skyscrapers and packed sidewalks, the city also boasts numerous lovely parks, ranging from small squares to the 850-acre Central Park, and there are worthwhile parks in every borough. From the views of the New Jersey Palisades from Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, to the grand Pelham Bay Park in The Bronx, and the famous Flushing Meadow Park in Corona, Queens, site of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, there is more than enough to keep any visitor busy. And almost any park is a great spot to rest, read, or just relax and watch the people streaming past.
Food & Accommodation in New York
New York has, as you might expect of the Big Apple, all the eating options covered and you can find almost every type of food available and every cuisine of the world represented. There are tens of thousands of restaurants to suit all tastes and budgets, ranging from dingy $0.99-a-slice pizza joints to $500-a-plate prix fixe sushi and exclusive Michelin-starred eateries. Thousands of delis, bodegas, and grocery stores dot every corner of the city and DIY meals are easy and cheap to find. Street food comes in various tastes, ranging from the ubiquitous New York hot dog vendors to the many carts with Middle Eastern cuisine on street corners in mid-town. However in mid-town be wary of restaurants and bars both immediately on and around Times Square, or near the Empire State Building - many are tourist traps cashing in on travelers' gullibility and lack of local knowledge.
Maybe it's the size of New Yorkers' tiny kitchens, or perhaps it's the enormous melting-pot immigrant populations, but either way, this city excels at every kind of restaurant. There are fancy famous-chef restaurants, all ethnic cuisines and fusion/updates of ethnic cuisines (second-generation immigrants tweaking their family tradition), plus all the fashionable spots, casual bistros, lounges for drinking and noshing and more.
The costs of hotel accommodation in New York City is generally higher than the American average. Manhattan in particular has some of the most expensive accommodation in the world, although some bargain hotels can still be found. Expect to pay up to $50 for a hostel, $100-200 for a budget room with shared bath, $250-350 for a mid-range hotel with a decent room and a restaurant and/or room service; right up to world famous luxury hotels such as the Waldorf Astoria or The Plaza, where a stay in the top suites can run into thousands of dollars a night. There is no shortage of choice and all of the major international hotel chains such as Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and Holiday Inn each have multiple properties in Manhattan. Most rooms below $200 in Manhattan are small with room for a bed, a tv, and little else, and may be located in less attractive areas of the island - for instance along the West Side Highway, or on the northern reaches beyond Central Park.
( New York - USA ) is well know as a tourist destination because of the variety of places you can enjoy while you are visiting New York. Through a series of videos we will try to show you recommended places to visit in New York - USA
Join us for more :
No comments :
Post a Comment