Complete Guide to the Big Apple with Great Walks, Dining, Shopping and Night Life (Gold Guides)

Describes points of interest in New York City, including museums, gardens, zoos, historic sites, and seasonal events, and recommends hotels,

Pleasures and Pastimes

Fine Dining
The old reliable four-star French restaurants, steak houses, delis, and diners are still doing what they've been doing best for years (and in some cases, decades), but there's plenty new afoot. For one thing, the bistro-trattoria mania that broke out a few years ago is going strong: The French are downtown, the Italians on the Upper East Side. The mix of small ethnic eating spots reflects shifting immigration patterns, and the newest national cuisines to make their mark are Austrian, Afghan, Brazilian, Thai, Turkish, and Jamaican. Chinatown, not to be outdone, is extending its borders, and noodle shops, complete with hanging ducks, heaping bowls of fried rice, and low prices, are sprouting up everywhere.

Nightlife
New York's vibrant nightlife has something to please everyone. Much of the club life is concentrated downtown -- in one night you can go to a grungy East Village dance dive, a classic West Village jazz joint, a sleekly decorated TriBeCa celebrity trap, or a preppy Wall Street hangout. Uptown's the place to go to listen to a romantic singer in a sophisticated setting like the Algonquin's Oak Room, or the Cafe Carlyle. If you just want a drink, you can frequent an unpretentious neighborhood saloon in jeans or a vintage hotel bar in your tux. You can also write your novel in a coffee bar or laugh yourself silly at a comedy club.

Shopping
Whether you're planning to run your credit cards up to the max or just window-shop, New York offers a veritable orgy of options. Try the South Street Seaport for its unique combination of upscale, high-tech, and kitschy retail shops (and a spectacular view of the Brooklyn Bridge); the Lower East Side for inexpensive clothing and shoes; SoHo for art and antiques, avant-garde gifts and decorative items, gourmet foods, and funky clothes; 5th and Madison avenues for haute couture; Herald Square for the biggest department stores; Chelsea for hip, superstore bargains; Columbus Avenue for some of the city's glitziest and most upscale if not top-of-the-line shops (and one of the biggest flea markets in the city); and the Upper East Side for unique and stylish items for the home, fine antiques, and designer clothing.

Summer Arts
In summer the open spaces of the city become outdoor concert halls. Lincoln Center's Out-of-Doors, Mostly Mozart, Midsummer Night Swing, and the Lincoln Center Festival transform Manhattan's performing arts centerpiece into a virtual state fair of the arts; while the theaters fill up with music, dance, and theater productions, stages set up in the plaza accommodate jazz dancers, chamber orchestras, Broadway lyricists and composers, mimes, dance bands, children's theater, and more. Metropolitan Opera in the Parks works its way throughout the five boroughs. In Central Park the New York Shakespeare Festival stages two plays every summer, while SummerStage fills the Naumburg Bandshell with free programs ranging from grand opera to polka to experimental rock. In Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the city's longest-running free performance series, Celebrate Brooklyn, brings a huge variety of performers to the most populous borough. To escape the heat, head to an indoor concert at the World Financial Center, near Battery Park.

Walking
New York is a walker's city. It's hard to get lost, except in the Village and lower Manhattan, in general, where New York's rigid grid pattern of streets falls apart. So step into your best walking shoes, choose any avenue or street, and follow it from one end to the other or from river to river, observing how the neighborhoods shade gradually into one another. Or hike across one of the city's many bridges for a fresh look at scenery that usually speeds by in a blur. Some of our favorite walks are 5th Avenue from 40th Street to Central Park; the path through Central Park from Grand Army Plaza to Bethesda Fountain; Broadway on the Upper West Side from Lincoln Center to 86th Street; east to west on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village; and the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn Heights and its Promenade.