Welcome to NEW YORK

The last three decades have seen New York experience dramatic urban renewal—its now as safe and clean as it was in the 1950s. Once again NYC, with its remarkable diversity, is a desirable place to live and visit. In addition to the more than 8 million people living in five boroughs, over 30 million people enjoy a New York City vacation each year. Whether you live here or are planning a visit, this on-line vacation travel destination magazine was designed to make your stay more fun and memorable.

A New York City Tour can be a great way to see and learn about the city. Choose from double decker bus tours, helicopter tours, harbor cruises, day trips and coach tours, all inclusive package tour, more…

Use the blue column menu to the far right for a photo and history tour of New York City including pages listed below. The Empire State building is once again the tallest building in NYC, until the Freedom Tower is completed, and the buildings observatory is at the top of most visitors list of places to see along with The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The Flatiron Building was one of New York's first and continues to be one of its most recognizable skyscrapers.

Times Square, New 42nd Street & the Broadway Theater District are now a must see family oriented entertainment spectacular. A must visit for the whole family while in Times Square is Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.

Visit Chelsea, Little Italy, Hell's Kitchen, Lincoln Center, the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and the Meatpacking District (home to the new Ground Zero Museum Workshop) or learn about NYC Beaches and Fire Island.

The Brooklyn Bridge is the oldest and most fascinating of the bridges connecting the island of Manhattan to other shores. South Street Seaport, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge is where New York history began. More recent history was recorded at Ground Zero while history is constantly being made at the United Nations. NYC Street Names reflect the City's history also.

New York has dozens of beautiful parks many of which are being connected in an 'Emerald Necklace' around Manhattan. Central Park is probably the best known of NYC's parks. Another popular destination is Fort Tryon Park with The Cloisters as its crowning jewel. If you plan a New York City Vacation you'll want to check out our Hotels. If you are going to move here or if you already live here but would like to move be sure to check out our New York City apartment rental service that actually pays you when you lease an apartment. If you find NYC housing too expensive to afford on your own try our roommate finder service.

New York's Manhattan borough is home to some of the oldest and finest Colleges & Universities in the United States. Brooklyn is a New York City borough with plenty to see and do; Brooklyn Heights is full of history and has great views of Manhattan (the New York Transit Museum is here), visit the Brooklyn Museum—one of the largest in the U.S., or the Brooklyn Children's Museum—the first children's museum. Coney Island has year-round attractions. In addition to the famous beach there is a fishing pier, KeySpan Park—home of the Brooklyn Cyclones—and the New York Aquarium.

Tourism

Tourism in New York City includes nearly 47 million foreign and American tourists each year. Major destinations include the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, Broadway theatre productions, museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other tourist attractions including Central Park, Washington Square Park, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Bronx Zoo, Chelsea Piers, New York Botanical Garden, luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues, and events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the Tribeca Film Festival, and free performances in Central Park at Summerstage and Delacorte Theater. The Statue of Liberty is a major tourist attraction and one of the most recognizable icons of the United States. Many New York City ethnic enclaves, such as Jackson Heights, Flushing, and Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for first and second generation Americans up and down the East Coast.

New York City has over 28,000 acres (110 km2) of parkland and 14 linear miles (22 km) of public beaches. Manhattan's Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is the most visited city park in the United States. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, also designed by Olmsted and Vaux, has a 90 acres (36 ha) meadow. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, the city's third largest, was the setting for the 1939 World's Fair and 1964 World's Fair.

New York's food culture, influenced by the city's immigrants and large number of dining patrons, is diverse. Jewish and Italian immigrants made the city famous for bagels, cheesecake and New York-style pizza. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafels and kebabs standbys of contemporary New York street food. The city is also home to many of the finest haute cuisine restaurants in the United States.

Tourism in New York City is a large industry. According to NYC & Company, the top producing countries for international visitors to New York City in 2005 were the United Kingdom (1,169,000), Canada (815,000), Germany (401,000), Japan (299,000), Italy (292,000), France (268,000), Ireland (253,000), Australia (235,000), Spain (205,000), and the Netherlands (147,000).

Spearheading the city's tourism efforts is NYC & Company, the city's official convention and visitor bureau currently headed by George Fertitta. It has offices in 14 countries, including Argentina, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Japan, Korea and China. NYC & Company is the official source of tourism statistics for the city. The research department develops and distributes comprehensive information on NYC domestic and international visitor statistics and monitors the travel industry's impact on New York City's economy. The department also produces 14 official New York City tourism marketing publications that feature information on member hotels, museums, attractions, theaters, stores, restaurants, meeting venues, and service providers.

Double decker tour buses and boats with tour guides bring sightseers to various parts of Manhattan and other boroughs, while pedicabs and horse cabs serve those with a taste for more personal service. More adventurous tourists rent bicycles at neighborhood shops or along the Hudson River Greenway or simply walk, which is often the quickest way to get around in congested, busy commercial districts and always the best way to appreciate street life.

Many visitors investigate their genealogy at historic immigration sites such as Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Other tourist destinations include the Empire State Building, for 41 years the world's tallest building after its construction in 1931, Radio City Music Hall, home of The Rockettes, a variety of Broadway shows, the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, housed on a World War II aircraft carrier, and city landmarks such as Central Park, which is one of the finest examples of landscape architecture in the world. New York City has encouraged tourist shopping by eliminating its sales tax on clothing and footwear.

The World Trade Center was an important tourist destination before the September 11, 2001 attacks, which devastated the city and its tourist industry. The city was nearly devoid of tourists for months, and it took two years for the numbers to fully rebound with fewer international, but more domestic visitors. Now the World Trade Center site has itself become an important place for visitors to see.

New York Aquarium on Coney Island

New York Aquarium-New York City's only and the oldest continually operating aquarium in the U.S.-on Coney Island supports the Wildlife Conservation Society's mission to save wildlife and wild places around the globe. Education programs compliment exhibits with over 8,000 animals in their efforts.

The New York Aquarium first opened in 1896 in Manhattan's Battery Park, and moved to Coney Island, Brooklyn in 1957. The Wildlife Conservation Society runs the New York Aquarium, Prospect Park Zoo and the Bronx Zoo. Entrance to New York Aquarium is included with purchase of the New York Pass.

The Society's environmental mission to protect wild life is evident throughout the aquarium's educational, hands-on exhibits. Visit any time because the New York Aquarium is open 365 days a year.

At Conservation Hall, guests can view exhibits on the Wildlife Conservation Society's research and conservation work and see marine life from the Caribbean's Glover's Reef ecosystem swimming in a 165,000-gallon tank. The Sea Cliffs is the recreation of a rocky North Pacific coastal habitat featuring penguins, Northern fur seals, walruses and other marine animals. After seeing the animals outdoors, visitors should head to the underground portion to catch the animals swimming underwater. At the Aqua theater, sea lion training demonstrations occur throughout the day. Guests can also watch scheduled feeding sessions for the sharks, penguins, and other animals.

Explore the Shore is an interactive exhibit about the ocean, complete with a wave machine and an electric eel. The Salt March exhibit in this gallery recreates the Jamaica Bay wetlands and explains the importance of salt marshes. The Jamaica Bay touch pool is a favorite place to interact with sea life. Corals, anemones and jellies swim in the Alien Stingers exhibit, one of the only permanent jellyfish exhibits in a U.S. aquarium.

The Bathysphere is displayed in the plaza. William Beebe, naturalist and Bronx Zoo curator, and deep-sea diver Otis Barton, used this metal undersea vessel in 1934 to explore the deep sea, breaking the world wide diving record of the time. The New York Aquarium also features the Deep Sea 3-D ride, simulating an underwater submarine expedition tracking giant squid and a sperm whale.

Visit the New York Aquarium web site for updated hours of operation and ticket prices. Free entrance to the New York Aquarium is just one of many included attractions, museums and tours when you purchase the New York Pass.

Central Park in New York City

Central Park was the first landscaped public park in the United States and while it is probably the best known and Manhattan's largest, at only 843 acres it's not the biggest park in New York City.

Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx is largest at 2,765 acres and Greenbelt on Staten Island, Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx are also all larger than Central Park.

Central Park was declared a national Historical Landmark in 1965 and a New York City Landmark in 1974. More than 20 million people visit the park each year. It has served as inspiration for many other city parks including Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Clicking the Central Park map to the left will open it in a new window so you can compare site locations. With its location on the Atlantic flyway Central Park is one of the country's richest bird watching areas. The Arthur Ross Pinetum is an ideal location to spot winter migrating long-eared and saw-whet owls sleeping during the day in its scientific collection of pine trees. 230 species of birds have been spotted in and around the Ramble—a 38-acre wild strolling garden featuring hundreds of trees and shrubs, secluded glades, rocky outcrops and a stream known as “The Grill.”

A Victorian Castle—Belvedere Castle—overlooks a pond, theater and large lawn near the mid point of the park. The 22 acre Central Park lake was created out of a large swamp and was developed for both boating and ice skating. Hernshead Boat Landing is the structure in the panorama at the left taken at the Lake in Central Park. Hernshead is also the name of the peninsula just beyond the structure - so named because it was thought to resemble a Heron - Hern in Britain. Ice skating was very popular from the lakes first opening in 1858 until Wollman Rink opened in 1951. Wollman Rink is open for day and night ice skating in season. Boating remains a popular activity on the lake. You can row your own boat or take a gondola ride.

The much smaller Pond in the southeast corner of Central Park—next to Central Park South and the Plaza Hotel—is well below street level which makes it surprisingly quiet and calm.

Gapstow Bridge arches over the northeast end of the Pond.

The largest body of water in Central Park is the 106-acre, 40 food deep Reservoir, named the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in 1994. It is circled by a 1.5 mile track used by thousands of runners a day. Weekly races are sponsored by the New York Road Runners Club. The northernmost body of water in Central Park is the 11-acre Harlem Meer where catch and release fishing is popular. The Charles A. Dana Discovery Center on the northern shore is Central Park's newest building. Don't miss the nearby Conservatory Garden. The northern end of the park, from 106th street to 110th street was added later, partially because the rugged terrain would be difficult for commercial development. North of 96th Street the park is more picturesque and rugged that the southern end. Central Park's great lawn was not part of the original design. A 33-acre rectangular reservoir holding 180 million gallons of drinking water from the Croton River occupied the space.

The reservoir was filled with stones from the building of Rockefeller Center, among other materials, beginning in 1931. Eight ball fields were added in the 1950's. Four basketball half-courts and two volleyball courts are circled by an 1/8 mile track at the northeast corner of the great lawn. The great lawn has been the site of many large events including a free concert by Paul Simon in August of 1991. The Dakota, at 72nd Street and Central Park West and one of New York's first luxury apartment buildings, was also the location for the movie Rosemary's Baby. This is where John Lennon lived with his wife Yoko Ono and son Sean when he was shot and killed in front of the building. The tear-drop shaped section of Central Park directly across from the Dakota is now known as Strawberry Fields. In 1981 the 2.5-acre site was named after the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever. Later a donation of $1 million from Yoko Ono along with plants and trees donated from around the world turned this small section of the park into a Garden of Peace. A main feature of the garden is a reproduction of a Pompeii mosaic, a gift of Naples, Italy. The black and white mosaic contains the single word IMAGINE—the title of one of Lennon's most popular songs and a tribute to the musician. Visitors to the garden leave flowers and other remembrances on the mosaic nearly every day.

Strawberry Fields was dedicated in honor of John Lennon on October 9, 1985—his birthday. There are several buildings in Central Park, two of which predate the park itself—a blockhouse at the north end dating from the War of 1812 and the Arsenal Building which was built between 1847 and 1851 by the State to store munitions. The Arsenal is now home to the City of New York/Parks & Recreation, the Central Park Administrator, the City Parks Foundation, the Historic House Trust, the New York Wildlife Conservation Society, the Parks Library, and the Arsenal Gallery. The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street in Central Park in 1880 in a modest building designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould. Today the Met is one of the eight cultural institutions in New York's famous Museum Mile which runs along the east side of Central Park on 5th Avenue from 82nd Street to 104th Street. Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre open space, was originally designed as a parade ground for military drills. Sheep actually grazed at Sheep Meadow every day until 1934 when the flock was transferred to Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Both the sheep and shepherd were housed in a fanciful Victorian building which later became a restaurant - part of the original building is now the Tavern on the Green. The Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater was originally a schoolhouse built for the 1876 Exposition in Philadelphia as an example of Swedish building design. It has served as a tool house, comfort station and lunchroom and entomological laboratory. Retrofitted with a children's theater in 1947 in is now the headquarters for the Citywide Puppets in the Parks program. The Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater was given a complete restoration in 1997 including a larger stage and air conditioning. A second floor balcony was reconstructed and the original Baltic fir exterior refurbished.

Free Shakespeare in the Park performances are provided at the Delacorte Theater - the summer home of The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. Tickets are distributed at 1pm on the day of the performance, but the line begins forming by 10am. Speaking of Shakespeare, The Shakespeare Garden in Central Park features only flowers that were mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and poetry. The informal garden was dedicated to Shakespeare in 1916 on the 300th anniversary of his death. A William Shakespeare statue, one of four sculptures in Central Park by John Quincey Adams Ward, resides at the southern end of the Mall, an area informally known as Literary Walk. The 40- foot wide Mall has four rows of American elms along each side. Friedsam Memorial Carousel was discovered abandoned on Coney Island. It's the fourth carousel at its mid-park at 64th street site - the first was powered by animals, a horse and blind mule according to park lore, and the next two by steam engines. The Friedsam Memorial Carousel, one of the largest in the U.S., was built by the Brooklyn firm of Stein and Goldstein in 1908.