New York holidays

No place else is quite like New York. Simply stated, we have more of the best to delight and entertain than anywhere in the world: 150 world-class museums, 18,000 restaurants of all types and price ranges, scores of Broadway theaters, and an unbelievable array of shopping. And no other city has such a diversity of people and cultures. Where else can you see Chinese dragon dancers, Caribbean stilt dancers, and Moroccan belly dancers in the same day?

Where else can you hurl darts in an Irish pub and then try your skill on a Neapolitan bocce court right down the street? Are there other places where you can sway to a reggae beat on your way to hear a German opera? Or go from a room full of Dutch Old Master paintings to one filled with cutting-edge fashion? And where else in the world can you lunch on Japanese sushi and enjoy hearty Brazilian feijoada for dinner? Welcome to New York, where the only limit is your imagination.

New York City: ‘The Big Apple’, boasting landmarks so iconic that visitors feel like they are on one gigantic movie set!

Getting to New York (or Manhattan, as that’s where everyone stays) for the first time is a very surreal experience. It is the world’s most famous city and it has appeared in more films than any other city in the world. Upon first arrival you have to pinch yourself to make sure you’re not in one of those films.

What makes it even more surreal is the fact that it is just like it is in the movies. Steam wisps from manholes all over Manhattan, hardly a second goes by when your eardrums don’t catch some trace of a car horn or siren, and men stand impatiently at hot dog stands which adorn every second street corner.

But something that you may expect is that Manhattan is not all skyscrapers and busy streets. Once you make it into downtown areas such as Greenwich Village, Chinatown, Soho and the East Village you begin to notice the surprisingly high number of low-rise buildings.

Even though most people who travel to New York don’t make it past Manhattan, you have to remember that this is only one borough of five. Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island make up the rest. If you have the time, take some time out to explore what some of the rest have to offer.

Immerse yourself in New York City for five minutes, and you’ll see why it’s like no other place on earth. Only here will you find all of America’s attributes – the diversity, the culture, the style – intensified in such an intriguing way. And only here will you experience those sublime moments that New York City is famous for…

If you're a first-time visitor, come see for yourself the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Bronx Zoo, Staten Island Ferry, Brooklyn Bridge and all our other world-famous attractions. If you've been here before, there's always another neighborhood to explore, another restaurant to try, another Broadway show and museum blockbuster to see, another don't-miss cultural performance or sporting event.

Budget Tips for New York

Manhattan's skyline is one of the world's best known and there is no better way to see it than from a (free) ferry. Departing (on average) every 30 minutes from the Whitehall St terminal, the ferry to Staten Island is one of the best things to do in NYC for free.

Jump on a subway to Chambers St or City Hall and within a few minutes walk you will be at the Manhattan end of New York's Brooklyn Bridge. It only takes 30 minutes each way and this is one thing in New York you should not leave without doing.

Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘wouldn’t it be great to have my face on a big screen in Times Square?’ Well good news - you can make that fantasy a reality! To experience what if feels like to see your face beside a million neon lights, get down to the Times Square Information Center (1560 Broadway, between 42nd & 43rd Streets), walk in and say 'I’d like my face on the big screen please' and before you can say 'cheese' your face will be projected to thousands!

Have you ever watched David Letterman in your living room and thought ‘Gee, I’d love to be in that audience?’ Well make your way down to the TKTS booth in Times Square on Mondays or Tuesdays and you should find somebody heckling about free tickets to something. Otherwise, log on to www.nytix.com.

This free museum at 56th Street & Madison Avenue is forever popular with tourists, not just because it refrains from imposing an admission charge, but because there are so many 'hands-on' exhibits. Open Tues-Sat 10am-6pm, Thurs 10am-8pm, Sun 12 noon-6pm; closed Mondays and major holidays.

HISTORY
The region was inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans at the time of its discovery by Italian Giovanni da Verrazano. Although Verrazano sailed into New York Harbor, his voyage did not continue upstream and instead he sailed back into the Atlantic. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who was employed by the Dutch monarchy that the area was mapped. He discovered Manhattan on September 11, 1609, and continued up the river that bears his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site where New York State's capital city, Albany, now stands.
The Dutch established New Amsterdam in 1613, which was granted self-government in 1652 under Peter Stuyvesant. The British conquered the city in September 1664 and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany. The Dutch briefly regained it in August 1673, renaming the city "New Orange", but ceded it permanently in November 1674.

New York City was the capital of the newly-formed United States from 1788 to 1790. In the 19th century, the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 enabled New York to overtake Boston and Philadelphia in economic importance, and local politics became dominated by a Democratic Party political machine known as Tammany Hall that drew on the support of Irish immigrants. The New York Draft Riots during the American Civil War were suppressed by the Union Army. In later years known as the Gilded Age, the city's upper classes enjoyed great prosperity amid the further growth of a poor immigrant working class; it was also an era associated with economic and municipal consolidation of what would become the five boroughs in 1898.

Construction of the Empire State Building, 1930A series of new transportation links, most notably the opening of the New York City Subway in 1904, helped bind together the newly-consolidated city. The height of European immigration brought social upheaval, and the anticapitalist labor union IWW was fiercely repressed. Later, in the 1920s, the city saw the influx of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the American South. The Harlem Renaissance blossomed during this period, part of a larger boom in the Prohibition era that saw the city's skyline transformed by construction of dueling skyscrapers. New York overtook London as the most populous city in the world in 1925, ending that city's century-old claim to the title.

The city was the site of a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the destruction of the World Trade Center. Among those who died were workers in the buildings, passengers and crew on two commercial airplanes, and hundreds of firemen, policemen, and rescue workers who responded to the disaster. The city's economy was substantially hurt but has since rebounded. The Freedom Tower, intended to be exactly 1,776 feet tall (a number symbolic of the year the Declaration of Independence was written), is to be built on the site and is slated for completion by 2010.