Adventures abroad 5

NEW YORK

The borough of Manhattan is what most people think of when they speak of New York City, one of the most fascinating cities in the world. The other boroughs are: Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Staten Island.

Before the arrival of Europeans, the Indian tribe Algonquian inhabited the island and named it Manhattan, which meant “island of the hills”. The Dutch, the first Europeans to settle there, founded a city for commercial purposes called New Amsterdam, but as a consequence of the English and Dutch rivalries in Europe, the English took New Amsterdam and renamed it New York, after the Duke of York, brother of the English king Charles II, in 1664 (The borough of Queens was named after the wife of Charles II, the Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza).

Manhattan is the centre of American art, theatre, publishing, fashion, shopping, advertising, finance, and much more. It is divided into the East Side and the West Side. Fifth Avenue is the dividing line. Both the avenues and streets have numbers: avenues with lower numbers are on the east side and they increase as you move west; streets with lower numbers are in Lower Manhattan and they increase as you move north in the direction of Central Park. Therefore, it is hard to lose oneself in Manhattan.

To enjoy the place you must walk in the crowds but take a taxi to discover why New York is a mosaic of cultures, starting with taxi drivers.

See the beautiful skyscrapers, visit the museums,  go to Broadway and shop (there are real good bargains) or window-shop in Saks, Bergdorf Goodman, Brooks Brothers... The bookshops (Barnes & Noble) are a huge temptation, but you must realize that you can´t bring back home all that weight in gifts… 

                                                                                      Empire State Building

Rockefeller Center

A view of Central Park from the 85th floor of One57, a tower in Midtown Manhattan under construction

Nuno Madeira created a site that makes it possible to visit New York online.


http://www.newyork360.net/