USA Travel Guide

USA - Places of Interest

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CANADA - Places of Interest

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NEW YORK

They don’t come `any bigger than the Big Apple – king of the hill, top of the heap, New York, New York. It’s got its fair share of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses, but it also has world class museums, big statues, even bigger buildings, outrageous excess, and a whole lot of whooo-wheee!

New York is a densely packed mass of humanity and all this living on top of one another makes the New Yorker a special kind of person. Although it’s hard to put a finger on what makes New York buzz, it’s the city’s hyperactive rush that really draws people here. Come take a bite!

In a city that is so much a part of the global subconscious, it’s pretty hard to pick a few highlights – wherever you go you’ll feel like you’ve been there before. For iconic value, you can’t surpass the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Central Park and Times Square. The Museum of Modern Art has to be one of the world’s top museums, and the Guggenheim Museum and American Museum of Natural History aren’t fair behind. Bookshops, food, theatre, shopping, people: it doesn’t really matter what you do or where you go in New York because the city itself is an in-your-face, exhilarating experience.

American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and 79th St, is most famous for its three large dinosaur halls but don’t dismiss the rest of the permanent collection (which contains about 30 million artefacts). Temporary exhibitions often have an emphasis on hands-on or interactive displays, making the museum extremely popular with kids. Couch potatoes should definitely check out the Museum of Television & Radio, a great place to head when it’s raining or when you’re simply fed up with walking. Over 75,000 US TV and radio programms are available from the museum’s computer catalog and you can sit down and veg out at one of 90 consoles.

Central Park
This vast rectangle of green is a welcome contrast to the concrete and traffic mess of the rest of Manhattan. Inevitably the city’s commotion does seep in, through skaters, joggers, musicians and tourists, but there are quieter areas to be enjoyed, along with free theatrical performances in summer.

It’s easy to see what a boon Central Park is when you’re standing up at the top of the Empire State: the 843-acre (337-hectare) rectangle of bobble-topped green bits are a welcome contrast to the concrete and traffic jostling in the rest of Manhattan. When Central Park was officially opened in 1873 it was intended to be an oasis from the city’s bustle. However the commotion that is New York seeps into the botanic calm in the form of joggers, skaters, musicians and tourists. Quieter areas are above 72nd St, where the crowds thin out and the well-planned landscaping becomes more apparent. There’s small zoo in the park, organized and casual sport (predominantly baseball and Frisbee) to watch or play, a swimming pool and various free performances.

Empire State Building
New York’s original skyline symbol, the Empire State Building, is a limestone classic built in just 410 days during the depths of the Depression. It stands 102 storeys and almost 449m (1472ft) tall and the famous antenna was originally to be a mooring mast for zeppelins, but the Hindenberg disaster put a stop to that plan.

One airship accidentally met up with the building: a B25 crashing into the 79th floor on a foggy day in July 1945, killing 14 people. Taking the ear-popping lift to the 86th or 102nd floor observation desks can entail a bit of waiting around, but it’s worth it when you get there.

Statue of Liberty:
The Statue of Liberty stands at the crossroads of Old World and New. The Lady with the Lamp represents not only the shining ideals of democracy but, over the years, has become a shorthand visual for the emmigrants’ lament inscribed on her base: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…’Back in 1865, however, it was only even meant to be a rather grand gesture on the part of political activities Edouard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye and sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi. The two of the came up with the idea at a dinner party and went away to build a monument, their paean to the American conception of political freedom, which they would then donate to the Land of Opportunity. Twenty one years later, on 28 October 1886, the 151ft (45m) Liberty Enlightening the World modeled on the Colossus of Rhodes, was finally unveiled in New York Harbor before President Grover Cleveland and a harbor full of tooting ships. It’s a 354-step climb to the statue’s crown.

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