Travel Guides | New York Travel Guide
New York Travel Guide
However many times you visit, New York is sure to move you. Its mesmerising appeal comes in different forms from other world-class cities: the lights that hold back the night, the zany characters on the streets, the neck-wrenching buildings and the exhilarating pace. A tranquil moment in New York is undoubtedly fleeting but it is this endless, inexhaustible energy that makes the city inimitable.
In no other city is more top-notch culture, architecture, food, entertainment, excitement and glamour caught within the confines of a net-like grid of streets. Perhaps the reason that New York is so frenetic is that visitors and locals simply feel there’s not enough time to sample everything that this extraordinary city has to offer.
International village
Despite the protestations of other world cities, New York is the planet’s urban epicentre and New Yorkers believe that anyone who chooses to live elsewhere must, in some sense, be kidding. Little Korea is just one block away from Little Brazil, Little Italy jostles for elbow room with Chinatown, which, in turn, merges into the Hispanic Lower East Side. This cosmopolitan diversity means that the city is open to visitors who pick out a little corner to claim as home, even if temporarily. Spend enough time in one neighbourhood and the local deli, grocer and dry-cleaner will greet you on a first-name basis, erasing the impersonal stigmas too often associated with the concrete façade of Manhattan. Following the events of September 11th 2001, New Yorkers feel even more fiercely tied to their city and its myriad communities.
Sensational
New York is cinematic, the backdrop for more than 200 movies a year. It is musical, getting name-checked in more songs than any other place on earth. It is endlessly mobile: see schoolgirls cutting loose on the subway to the beat of drummers. Sample foods from all around the world, watch fashionistas strut their stuff and media empires flash neon news to a soundtrack of roaring traffic and taxis horns. New York is a city of sights, sounds, smells and tastes and it won’t take you long to feel the vibe. The air is thick with potential; literally anything could happen and every visit is an adventure.
Grid and bear it
The mass of high-rise buildings that constitute this endless urban jungle is really a network of finely tuned neighbourhoods divided up neatly into blocks. Although visitors might first experience the city as an imposing amount of concrete and an undying amount of chaos, New York’s grid of avenues and streets is a carefully orchestrated system that somehow keeps the anarchy in check, while allowing the spirit of the city to soar free.
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