Travel information and city guide for those about to travel in New York. The only way to really explore New York is on foot - so get ready to pound the pavements with our fabulous travel information and online travel guide to New York City.
From the ubiquitous yellow cab to the Statue of Liberty, the towering Empire State Building to the neon lights of Times Square, much of what we think of as America is, in fact, New York. And if you are looking for a city that combines fantastic sights and an energetic buzz unrivalled anywhere in the world, then New York is the place to go.
New York City Guide
From shopping to sightseeing, musicals to martinis, delis to discotheques, New York caters to all tastes and undoubtedly the best way to experience the canyon-esque avenues and lively street life of this pulsating city is on foot. But when you are walking in one of the biggest cities in the world, where exactly do you start? Follow our walking New York City Guide for more travel information and ideas.
Well, conveniently, while New York is a large, sprawling city, the centre and main draw, Manhattan Island, is small enough to walk in a day.
Times Square, a sight to behold in its own right, is a good place to start. At one time a seedy, neglected area home to the city’s sex shops, in recent years Times Square has been rejuvenated and is now a sight to behold, particularly after dark when the neon lights are at full blast. A short walk north from Times Square is the entrance to New York’s garden, Central Park.
Consisting of 843 acres of parkland amid the hustle and bustle of middle Manhattan, Central Park is a beautiful landscaped area where it is easy to forget you are in the heart of one of the busiest cities on the planet. Although worth a visit all year round, the park is probably best in the summer months when cyclists, rollerbladers and joggers, along with numerous summer concerts and frolicking sunbathers give it a lively feel.
View our slide show of photos from New York, Click Here
On the southern edge of the park, on Fifth Avenue, is the famous Plaza Hotel and a short walk down Fifth Avenue brings you to Trump Towers, one of New York’s tallest buildings, built by Billionaire entrepreneur Donald Trump. Fifth Avenue is where the serious shopping begins. Famous labels such as Hugo Boss and Channel, as well as stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue can all be found here, and thanks to the strong pound, it’s all cheaper than what you’d expect to pay in the UK.
New York City Travel Guide
Many of New York’s museums are also in this area: The Museum of Television and Radio, with a collection of over 50,000 TV and radio shows; New York City Museum, dedicated to exhibitions on New York’s colourful history and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to name but a few. One of the best museums to visit though is the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA as it is referred. The museum holds a fantastic collection of modern art; Van Gogh, Monet, Pollock, Rothko, Picasso and a legion more. What’s more, if you are visiting New York on the weekend, after 4pm on Fridays admission is free!
New York City Guide: Explore New York
Wander a few blocks south from MoMa along Fifth Avenue, passed an array of superb shops, boutiques and towering skyscrapers, the impressive Rockefeller Center among them, and the Empire State Building, deceptively elusive despite its size, is suddenly upon you. For $15 you can ride to the top and experience some awe inspiring views of the city. It is undoubtedly a must-do for anyone visiting New York for the first time. The queues for the Empire State Building can be long, but it really is worth the wait: to make the most of your trip arrive early when the doors open at 8am and view the city as it awakes.
If you continue south along Fifth Avenue, after a number of blocks you reach Madison Square Park. The park would not really be worth visiting, but for the fact that on its southern point it is flanked by the architectural wonder that is the Flatiron Building. A triangular building built to utilise the plot of land on which it stands, when it was completed in 1902 it was the tallest structure in the world and one of the first to be built using a steel-frame.
Explore New York: Walking Routes for New York City
Continue walking south to the very end of Fifth Avenue and you enter one of New York’s most romanticised and popular districts: Greenwich Village. ‘The Village,’ as New Yorkers refer to it, unlike much of lower Manhattan, has no high rise properties and has a feel all of its own. The Village, in particular the area’s main square, Washington Square Park at the bottom of Fifth Avenue, was the heart of the revolutionary counter-culture made famous during the 1950s and 1960s as the hang out of novelists, actors and music stars, Bob Dylan among them.
New York City Guide: Explore Greenwich Village
Today, Greenwich Village still retains its bohemian feel, but you are more likely to find a French market taking place, than any political protest. The area has done well out of gentrification. Restaurants and bars abound in Greenwich, with Dylan Thomas’ last drinking haunt, the White Horse on Hudson Street, a popular choice. For mouth-watering burgers American style, the Corner Bistro on West Fourth Street has what you are looking for.
From Washington Square Park, at the bottom of Fifth Avenue, New York’s capital-of-cool shopping and entertainment district, SoHo (South of Houston Street) is within easy reach. Here you’ll find smaller (but not often cheaper) and more downmarket shops, such as the Adidas store and, for all gadget freaks, the Apple Store, on Princes Street. It is a great place to walk around and shop for clothes and electrical items.
New York City Travel Information: Little Italy & China Town
Further south and the twin delights of Little Italy and China Town are well worth making the effort to visit. Little Italy is no bigger than a couple of blocks, mostly given over to Italian restaurants, but is a must-do for Godfather fans wanting to visit the iconic streets in which Don Corleone is gunned down.
Chinatown, the largest Chinatown in the United States, is much larger and is a bustling area of market stalls, electronic shops and clothes stores: it is also the best place in the city to sample Chinese cuisine.
Chinatown merges with the Financial District in Lower Manhattan and no visit to Lower Manhattan would be complete without visiting the site of the Twin Towers. Visitors will be surprised at how large an area the site occupies, and no one can fail to be moved by the experience. The perimeter fence has a memorial to those who died.
Further south on the southern tip of Manhattan Island is historic Battery Park, the oldest inhabited part of Manhattan. From here visitors can take the boat-trip over to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. On Ellis Island you will find an interesting museum on the history of immigration to New York and the unique role played by the island as the final destination for hundreds of thousands of European immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Since 9/11 visitors are no longer allowed to climb the Statue of Liberty, somewhat defeating the purpose of visiting. A good alternative is to take the Staten Island Ferry, which has a terminal nearby. The ferry is free and offers excellent views of the statue, as well as exceptional views of Manhattan on the return trip. It also provides a good point to rest your legs after all that walking!
Explore New York: City Travel Tips - The Staten Island Ferry
To the east of the Staten Island ferry is the old City Hall and Wall Street, home to the American stock exchange. Close-by, too, is the iconoclastic Brooklyn Bridge, which is well worth walking across (there is a pedestrian foot-bridge above the road), for the exceptional views of Manhattan Island and Brooklyn.
Whatever your interests, New York is a destination you will want to return to again and again, and thanks to the grid system of the streets, used throughout much of the city, it is a brilliant place in which to walk because if you can count to one hundred it is nigh on impossible to get lost. Honest, try it for yourself!
New York City Travel Information - Flights to New York
British Airways have regular flights to New York and often a number of special offers. www.britishairways.co.uk
Regular daily flights to New York from London. www.virgin-atlantic.co.uk
Top Travel Tips: With heightened security at International Airports travellers to the US can face delays getting through immigration. JFK Airport is one of the worst for delays. If you are travelling to New York, finding a flight to Newark, which is not as busy, may cut the amount of time you have to wait to get through immigration. It is just as quick to get to Manhattan from Newark as it is from JFK.
Cabs from JFK Airport or Newark International in New Jersey cost $45, plus tolls. The subway ride from JFK to any station in New York costs just $2 (subject to change), but can take a while and involves multiple changes. Alternatively, catch a bus outside the airport to Grand Central Station or Penn Station in central Manhattan from just $15 each way: faster than the subway, cheaper than a cab.
New York City Guide - New York Hotels -Where to Stay
Spalsh Out:
The Four Seasons Hotel: One of New York’s most opulent hotels the Four Seasons sits in the heart of Manhattan. www.fourseasons.com
Standard:
The New Yorker: A classic Art Deco building in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, opposite world famous Madison Square Gardens. Rooms are clean but basic. Great if you want a low cost hotel in a superb location in the heart of New York City. www.newyorkerhotel.com
Budget:
The Larchmont Hotel: Well placed for exploring Greenwich Village and much of Lower Manhattan. Shared bathrooms may not appeal to all, but they help bring the price down, especially due to the hotel’s superb Greenwich Village location. www.larchmonthotel.com
Sex and the City New York Locations
Magnolia Bakery at 401 Bleecker Street on the corner of West 11th Street in the West Village – where Carrie and Miranda devour cupcakes.
Jimmy Choo’s boutique, one of Carrie’s favourite shoe shops, is located in the Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue.
The Louis K. Meisel Gallery at 141 Price Street – the Gallery where Charlotte worked.
O’Neal’s Speakeasy, 174 Grand Street in downtown Manhattan. This is where scenes from the girl’s local bar Scout were shot.
Down the Hatch Bar, 179 W. 4th St - where Samantha bought a joint from the barman
Bungalow 8, 515 West 27th Street. The hotspot Carrie’s date has a key to gain access to.
Tao - 58th and Madison – the popular night spot where Carrie bumps into Big and his supermodel date.
Tiffany’s, where Charlotte’s engagement ring came from - 727 5th Ave.
The Patricia Field store, 10 East 8th Street in Greenwich Village. Here you can buy stylish bargains from the famous Sex and the City stylist’s own shop.
The Church Around the Corner, East 29th Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, where Samantha met the Friar.
From the ubiquitous yellow cab to the Statue of Liberty, the towering Empire State Building to the neon lights of Times Square, much of what we think of as America is, in fact, New York. And if you are looking for a city that combines fantastic sights and an energetic buzz unrivalled anywhere in the world, then New York is the place to go.
New York City Guide
From shopping to sightseeing, musicals to martinis, delis to discotheques, New York caters to all tastes and undoubtedly the best way to experience the canyon-esque avenues and lively street life of this pulsating city is on foot. But when you are walking in one of the biggest cities in the world, where exactly do you start? Follow our walking New York City Guide for more travel information and ideas.
Well, conveniently, while New York is a large, sprawling city, the centre and main draw, Manhattan Island, is small enough to walk in a day.
Times Square, a sight to behold in its own right, is a good place to start. At one time a seedy, neglected area home to the city’s sex shops, in recent years Times Square has been rejuvenated and is now a sight to behold, particularly after dark when the neon lights are at full blast. A short walk north from Times Square is the entrance to New York’s garden, Central Park.
Consisting of 843 acres of parkland amid the hustle and bustle of middle Manhattan, Central Park is a beautiful landscaped area where it is easy to forget you are in the heart of one of the busiest cities on the planet. Although worth a visit all year round, the park is probably best in the summer months when cyclists, rollerbladers and joggers, along with numerous summer concerts and frolicking sunbathers give it a lively feel.
View our slide show of photos from New York, Click Here
On the southern edge of the park, on Fifth Avenue, is the famous Plaza Hotel and a short walk down Fifth Avenue brings you to Trump Towers, one of New York’s tallest buildings, built by Billionaire entrepreneur Donald Trump. Fifth Avenue is where the serious shopping begins. Famous labels such as Hugo Boss and Channel, as well as stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue can all be found here, and thanks to the strong pound, it’s all cheaper than what you’d expect to pay in the UK.
New York City Travel Guide
Many of New York’s museums are also in this area: The Museum of Television and Radio, with a collection of over 50,000 TV and radio shows; New York City Museum, dedicated to exhibitions on New York’s colourful history and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to name but a few. One of the best museums to visit though is the Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA as it is referred. The museum holds a fantastic collection of modern art; Van Gogh, Monet, Pollock, Rothko, Picasso and a legion more. What’s more, if you are visiting New York on the weekend, after 4pm on Fridays admission is free!
New York City Guide: Explore New York
Wander a few blocks south from MoMa along Fifth Avenue, passed an array of superb shops, boutiques and towering skyscrapers, the impressive Rockefeller Center among them, and the Empire State Building, deceptively elusive despite its size, is suddenly upon you. For $15 you can ride to the top and experience some awe inspiring views of the city. It is undoubtedly a must-do for anyone visiting New York for the first time. The queues for the Empire State Building can be long, but it really is worth the wait: to make the most of your trip arrive early when the doors open at 8am and view the city as it awakes.
If you continue south along Fifth Avenue, after a number of blocks you reach Madison Square Park. The park would not really be worth visiting, but for the fact that on its southern point it is flanked by the architectural wonder that is the Flatiron Building. A triangular building built to utilise the plot of land on which it stands, when it was completed in 1902 it was the tallest structure in the world and one of the first to be built using a steel-frame.
Explore New York: Walking Routes for New York City
Continue walking south to the very end of Fifth Avenue and you enter one of New York’s most romanticised and popular districts: Greenwich Village. ‘The Village,’ as New Yorkers refer to it, unlike much of lower Manhattan, has no high rise properties and has a feel all of its own. The Village, in particular the area’s main square, Washington Square Park at the bottom of Fifth Avenue, was the heart of the revolutionary counter-culture made famous during the 1950s and 1960s as the hang out of novelists, actors and music stars, Bob Dylan among them.
New York City Guide: Explore Greenwich Village
Today, Greenwich Village still retains its bohemian feel, but you are more likely to find a French market taking place, than any political protest. The area has done well out of gentrification. Restaurants and bars abound in Greenwich, with Dylan Thomas’ last drinking haunt, the White Horse on Hudson Street, a popular choice. For mouth-watering burgers American style, the Corner Bistro on West Fourth Street has what you are looking for.
From Washington Square Park, at the bottom of Fifth Avenue, New York’s capital-of-cool shopping and entertainment district, SoHo (South of Houston Street) is within easy reach. Here you’ll find smaller (but not often cheaper) and more downmarket shops, such as the Adidas store and, for all gadget freaks, the Apple Store, on Princes Street. It is a great place to walk around and shop for clothes and electrical items.
New York City Travel Information: Little Italy & China Town
Further south and the twin delights of Little Italy and China Town are well worth making the effort to visit. Little Italy is no bigger than a couple of blocks, mostly given over to Italian restaurants, but is a must-do for Godfather fans wanting to visit the iconic streets in which Don Corleone is gunned down.
Chinatown, the largest Chinatown in the United States, is much larger and is a bustling area of market stalls, electronic shops and clothes stores: it is also the best place in the city to sample Chinese cuisine.
Chinatown merges with the Financial District in Lower Manhattan and no visit to Lower Manhattan would be complete without visiting the site of the Twin Towers. Visitors will be surprised at how large an area the site occupies, and no one can fail to be moved by the experience. The perimeter fence has a memorial to those who died.
Further south on the southern tip of Manhattan Island is historic Battery Park, the oldest inhabited part of Manhattan. From here visitors can take the boat-trip over to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. On Ellis Island you will find an interesting museum on the history of immigration to New York and the unique role played by the island as the final destination for hundreds of thousands of European immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Since 9/11 visitors are no longer allowed to climb the Statue of Liberty, somewhat defeating the purpose of visiting. A good alternative is to take the Staten Island Ferry, which has a terminal nearby. The ferry is free and offers excellent views of the statue, as well as exceptional views of Manhattan on the return trip. It also provides a good point to rest your legs after all that walking!
Explore New York: City Travel Tips - The Staten Island Ferry
To the east of the Staten Island ferry is the old City Hall and Wall Street, home to the American stock exchange. Close-by, too, is the iconoclastic Brooklyn Bridge, which is well worth walking across (there is a pedestrian foot-bridge above the road), for the exceptional views of Manhattan Island and Brooklyn.
Whatever your interests, New York is a destination you will want to return to again and again, and thanks to the grid system of the streets, used throughout much of the city, it is a brilliant place in which to walk because if you can count to one hundred it is nigh on impossible to get lost. Honest, try it for yourself!
New York City Travel Information - Flights to New York
British Airways have regular flights to New York and often a number of special offers. www.britishairways.co.uk
Regular daily flights to New York from London. www.virgin-atlantic.co.uk
Top Travel Tips: With heightened security at International Airports travellers to the US can face delays getting through immigration. JFK Airport is one of the worst for delays. If you are travelling to New York, finding a flight to Newark, which is not as busy, may cut the amount of time you have to wait to get through immigration. It is just as quick to get to Manhattan from Newark as it is from JFK.
Cabs from JFK Airport or Newark International in New Jersey cost $45, plus tolls. The subway ride from JFK to any station in New York costs just $2 (subject to change), but can take a while and involves multiple changes. Alternatively, catch a bus outside the airport to Grand Central Station or Penn Station in central Manhattan from just $15 each way: faster than the subway, cheaper than a cab.
New York City Guide - New York Hotels -Where to Stay
Spalsh Out:
The Four Seasons Hotel: One of New York’s most opulent hotels the Four Seasons sits in the heart of Manhattan. www.fourseasons.com
Standard:
The New Yorker: A classic Art Deco building in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, opposite world famous Madison Square Gardens. Rooms are clean but basic. Great if you want a low cost hotel in a superb location in the heart of New York City. www.newyorkerhotel.com
Budget:
The Larchmont Hotel: Well placed for exploring Greenwich Village and much of Lower Manhattan. Shared bathrooms may not appeal to all, but they help bring the price down, especially due to the hotel’s superb Greenwich Village location. www.larchmonthotel.com
Sex and the City New York Locations
Magnolia Bakery at 401 Bleecker Street on the corner of West 11th Street in the West Village – where Carrie and Miranda devour cupcakes.
Jimmy Choo’s boutique, one of Carrie’s favourite shoe shops, is located in the Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue.
The Louis K. Meisel Gallery at 141 Price Street – the Gallery where Charlotte worked.
O’Neal’s Speakeasy, 174 Grand Street in downtown Manhattan. This is where scenes from the girl’s local bar Scout were shot.
Down the Hatch Bar, 179 W. 4th St - where Samantha bought a joint from the barman
Bungalow 8, 515 West 27th Street. The hotspot Carrie’s date has a key to gain access to.
Tao - 58th and Madison – the popular night spot where Carrie bumps into Big and his supermodel date.
Tiffany’s, where Charlotte’s engagement ring came from - 727 5th Ave.
The Patricia Field store, 10 East 8th Street in Greenwich Village. Here you can buy stylish bargains from the famous Sex and the City stylist’s own shop.
The Church Around the Corner, East 29th Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, where Samantha met the Friar.
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