The arts’ centre. the love of architecture. restaurant and retail hub. Trendsetter. As she offers an appetising feast for all, New York City wears many crowns.
Icons of the art world like The Met, MoMA, and the Guggenheim are simply the tip of the iceberg. There are museums dedicated to everything from mediaeval European treasures to fin de siècle Vienna, as well as expansive galleries featuring Japanese sculpture, postmodern American painting, Himalayan textiles, and New York City history. Explore the cutting-edge galleries in Chelsea and the Lower East Side with their fun opening-night events (typically Thursday night if you want to join in), or visit uncharted territory in Brooklyn and Queens to catch a glimpse of today’s and tomorrow’s greats.
NYC is a wanderer’s paradise thanks to its small size and streets brimming with visual candy of all kinds, including architectural marvels, Old World cafes, and atmospheric bookshops. In this chaotic city of more than 200 different nationalities, crossing continents is as simple as taking a few streets. You can get lost in the bustle of Chinatown, which is home to vibrant Buddhist temples and sizzling noodle restaurants, before making your way up to Nolita for alluring boutiques and coffee tasting. Every area offers a radically different view of the city, from the Upper West Side’s century-old Jewish delis to Greenwich Village’s winding cobblestone pathways. And exploring its streets is the greatest way to get a feel for it.
When the sun sinks slowly beyond the Hudson and luminous skyscrapers light up the night, New York transforms into one grand stage. Well-known actors take to the legendary theaters of Broadway and world-class soloists, dancers and musicians perform at venues large and small across town. Whether high culture or low, New York embraces it all: in-your-face rock shows at Williamsburg dives, lavish opera productions at the Lincoln Center, and everything in between. This is a city of experimental theater, improv comedy, indie cinema, ballet, poetry, burlesque, jazz and so much more. If you can dream it up, it’s probably happening.
In New York, there has never been a finer time to eat. It’s a hive of seasonally appropriate, locally sourced food, with restaurants growing their own produce in rooftop gardens or on farms in upstate New York, buying their meat and seafood from ethical suppliers close by, and embracing everything artisanal, from coffee roasting and whiskey distilling to chocolate and cheese making. Pre-Prohibition era cocktails are now offered in bars alongside mouthwatering small dishes; in fact, gastropubs are some of the most inventive restaurants today. Bars have also raised the bar in terms of originality. Of course, you may also eat at one of the 75 Michelin-starred restaurants in the city or at a gourmet food truck.