Lonely Planet - New York City

When you're exploring New York, check out these highlights, brought to you courtesy of our friends at Lonely Planet Publications

1. Soak up the views from the rooftop garden

With nearly three million pieces in its collection, five million visitors a year and an annual budget of $120 million, the Met is New York's biggest, richest and most celebrated cultural institution. It could take a lifetime to appreciate all that is has to offer. Its $155 million renovation, started in 2004 and due for completion in 2007, has added a new Roman Court and brought loads of hidden antiquities (including an Etruscan chariot) out of storage. They've renovated galleries dedicated to Roman and modern art and pumped up the number of Hellenistic works on display to 7500.

You'll want plenty of time to explore this behemoth; the European galleries above the marble staircase at the Fifth Ave entrance could easily consume a day, as could the larger-than-ever Greek and Roman galleries, and the newly-expanded Egyptian gallery, with its perfectly preserved mummies and entire Temple of Dendur, saved from submersion in the waters of the Aswan Dam.

Behind the temple is the American wing, with an incongruous combination of Tiffany glass, baseball cards and the facade of a US Bank. The dark, lovely medieval galleries appear next, filled with iconic artifacts, Byzantine enamels and religious jewelry. Then comes the calm oasis of the Lehman Wing, filled with Renaissance paintings by Rembrandt, Memling and El Greco. There are also Africa, Oceania and the Americas galleries, an Asian art gallery and many special art collections.

2. Stroll through the sculpture garden

The MoMA's 1939 facade got an all-over spiffing up in 2004, courtesy of Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, and is now an uptown gem, gleaming and transcendent.

The best way to explore this multilevel building is to start at the old entrance, with a strange, cantilevered canopy that looks like the top of an old baby-grand piano. It's a few doors down from the new entrance on West 53rd St where tickets are sold. Take the elevator to the 6th floor, home to special exhibits. As you look out the windows, you'll get the best appreciation of how Taniguchi integrated the modern MoMA into the surrounding older architecture.

If you follow the museum's contours, you'll move downward from floor to floor, and chronologically through the major art movements of the 20th century. Floors five and four are MoMA's intro to modern art - Picassos, Matisses, Dalis, Mondrians, Pollocks, de Koonings and a few Marcel Duchamp originals. The 3rd floor is packed with exhibits tracing the development of architecture and design. The 2nd floor contains prints, illustrated books, and exhibits about film and media that often coincide with film series put on in the new theaters below the lobby. Beyond the second floor atrium is an informal cafe and espresso bar with homey, communal tables. The 1st floor surrounds the wondrous, inspiring Sculpture Garden - step outside to take in the benches and trees bent into curious shapes.

3. Zip to the top of the rock

With twenty-two ornate, luxurious acres of shops, gardens, banks and art deco sculptures right in the heart of pulsating Manhattan, what could be more magnificent on a cold winter's night than this iconic location with its immense Christmas tree and romantic skating rink? Only the view from 70 stories up. Top of the Rock, the city's most expansive and vertigo-inducing observation deck, shut down for 20 years, is back in business.

Rockefeller Center was conceived by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller during the Great Depression. Engaging in a mammoth project to house clothing stores and other high-end shops at a time when most Americans barely had two coins to rub together was a risky enterprise. But the decade-long project provided 70,000 workers with jobs and created a celebrated 'city within a city' that now houses several major media corporations, including NBC Studios and the Associated Press.

It also contains more than 100 works of art, including a major mural in each building - all but the one by Mexican artist Diego Rivera.

Rivera included Lenin in his work, which didn't please his capitalist boss. It was destroyed, and replaced by Jose Maria Sert's painting of Abraham Lincoln. Other important works include Prometheus, overlooking the skating rink, Atlas carrying the world on Fifth Ave, and News, an installation by Isamu Noguchi at 45 Rockefeller Plaza.

4. Take in a Broadway show amid the Times Sq neon

This maelstrom of human activity and flashing neon lights is definitely the city's most famous intersection. Synonymous in the late 1960s with sex shops, peep shows and colorful off beat characters, today's Times Sq has a comparatively clean and healthy image (although its 40 miles of neon does turn night into day, and can make you feel a bit like a french fry under a hot lamp). Nonetheless, its trademark, high-energy theater buzz still abounds, especially on weekend nights when the lights are flashing, sidewalks are jumping and everybody is hustling for that 8pm curtain.

Formerly known as Long Acre Sq, this placid horse-trading plaza changed forever in 1904 with the advent of the subway and the addition of the New York Times newspaper, which eventually lent its name to the location. The paper threw itself a little party on December 31, which has now become the annual New Year's Eve ball-dropping bacchanalia.

Don't worry if you miss it though - the full-on, high wattage effect of Times Sq is a daily occurrence. Known as the Crossroads of the World, it remains the brashest, boldest piece of in-your-face infotainment the world's ever seen.

5. Explore Central Park's pathways

Welcome to the lungs of New York City, a place where verdant grasses, dappled forests, wild flowers and cool, meandering streams erase the memories of traffic jams and crowded sidewalks. This is the people's park, designed in the 1860s and '70s by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to provide an open space for everyone.

This oasis of rolling pastures and gardens stretches from midtown to the beautifully restored Harlem Meer. Walkers, joggers, cyclists, inline skaters, rock-climbers, cross-country skiers and horseback riders share the ample supply of roadways. Couples, friends and sometimes even strangers meet at the center, Betheseda Terrace, recognizable by the famous Angel of the Waters statue in its middle.

So much communing with nature gets done in Central Park that it's hard to believe it's almost entirely artificial - it was the first landscaped park built in US history. To make space for it, several communities and businesses were razed, including Seneca Village, Manhattan's first prominent gathering of free African-American property owners. Olmsted and Vaux also drained a swamp, moved fi ve million cubic yards of soil and built four transverse roads to carry cross-town traffic beneath the park's hills (66th, 79th, 86th and 96th Sts run right underneath).

The park's northern sections were deliberately left untamed, with the exception of the Conservatory Gardens, a sensory overload of tulips and flowering apple trees. Most of the area above 79th St is craggy and wild.

One of the most famous parts of the park is the Great Lawn, between 72nd and 86th Sts, where you can catch the New York Philharmonic Orchestra each summer. Nearby you'll find Delacorte Theater, home to the annual Shakespeare in the Park Festival, panoramic Belvedere Castle, the bird-watching (and gay-male cruising) haven of the Ramble, and Loeb Boathouse, where you can take a romantic row around a glassy pond.

You can also check out the penguins, polar bears, sea lions, pandas and tamarin monkeys at the Central Park Wildlife Center, housing a children's discovery center as well. Sea lions chow down frenzy by tossing in some fish.

Walkers and joggers will appreciate the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. Its circular 1.58-mile track is a favorite training ground for the New York City marathon.

On the park's west side, near the 79th St Tranverse, is Strawberry Fields, home to an ever-evolving, changing memorial to John Lennon, who liked to hang out in that ethereal stretch of park and who was shot by a deranged fan while entering his apartment across the street in 1980. The list of must-sees and dos goes on and on in Central Park; for more information, visit the Dairy Visitor Center (Tel: 212- 794-6564; www.centralpark.org).

6. Brunch at West Village Cafe

Full of winding streets built on old cow paths, and hidden courtyards behind narrow, tree-lined alleys, the 'Village' was once a hotbed of political activity - a crazy, Bohemian neighborhood where only artists and outcasts dared live. Now it's a privileged enclave for wealthy celebrity residents who, to give them their due, are fighting to preserve its character against an onslaught of modern steel and glass construction.

Much of the Village's storied history has been reduced to a handful of well-known landmarks and celebrations. That's not to say that Greenwich Village isn't worth visiting - it is, as much for its history as its genteel pace, the shopping and the people-watching.

You'll see century-old clapboard houses and pass many a haunted bar. The Village is rife with spirits - Welsh poet Dylan Thomas drank himself into a coma at the White Horse Tavern. Literary greats who lived and worked here include Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, Eugene O'Neill, ee cummings and William Burroughs. While Greenwich Village is no longer the locus of creative life in the city, its energy is distinct enough to merit a look.

7. Enjoy local hangouts in Harlem

A mecca of urban African American life for over a century, Harlem has burst out of its 1980s doldrums with a vengeance. Not only have long-standing cultural icons been restored and revitalized, like the Apollo Theater, the Lenox Lounge, the Studio Museum and the Schomburg Center for Black Research, it's put forward a whole new crop of cafes, stores, restaurants and jazz clubs. It's still pockmarked with signs of neglect, but it's reclaiming the artistic vitality that buoyed the community prior to the Great Depression.

City policy makers largely ignored Harlem after the 1930s economic fallout, and decades of neglect came to a head during the 1960s Civil Rights movement as Harlem was beset with riots. The 1980s crack epidemic turned rows of once-prestigious brownstones into abandoned addict havens. But now, thanks mostly to Manhattan's inflated real estate market, Harlem, with its wide boulevards, historic churches, and gorgeous beaux-arts facade buildings, is back on top. Developers, given tax breaks by the city, are pouring in, and community activists are working hard to control the gentrification so that it fosters growth, not displacement, for black residents.

8. Ship out at Sout St seaport

An eye-catching combination of old and new, Lower Manhattan contains some of the island's most grandiose skyscrapers, crammed on to tiny colonial streets. This is where the city was born, first as a native Lenape settlement, then as a Dutch colony and later a British stronghold and the (temporary) capital of a new, free nation. Lower Manhattan overflows with both Revolutionary and modern landmarks.

George Washington was sworn in at Federal Hall; he worshipped at St Paul's Chapel and Trinity Church, and buried many of his contemporaries in its cemetery. The New York Stock Exchange got its start on Wall St, named after the original Dutch fortifying wall, and remains headquartered there.

The World Trade Center towers were the most dramatic element of the NYC skyline and their loss in 2001 left a visible hole. Much has changed of late at Ground Zero. No longer a rough and jagged hole, the viewing platform overlooks a construction site-cum-memorial.

The city hopes to start development on new buildings and a contemplation space by 2010. The addition of plaques explaining the timeline of September 11, 2001 have added structure to the area, and a bronze sculpture on the west side of the famous Liberty St fi rehouse details the Fire Department's personnel loss. Aside from paying tribute to its heroes, though, the city has generally chosen to focus on moving forward rather than on what was irrevocably lost.

9. Gallery hop in Dumbo

It's only taken about 100 years, but a reversal of fortune is finally at hand for Manhattan's most famous outer borough. It was just over a century ago that Brooklyn's elders made the 'Great Mistake of 98' and linked the formerly independent municipality to greater New York City. The result, of course, was a great fiscal boom for Manhattan and a terrible economic wane for Brooklyn. Now, thanks to a convergence of factors (mostly to sky-high Manhattan housing costs), Brooklyn's more than caught up with - and some say surpassed - Manhattan in terms of nightlife, cultural offerings and great eats.

From the artists' enclave known as Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass (Dumbo), to the respected performances at Brooklyn Academy of Music, trendy, hipster Williamsburg, funky, far-out Coney Island, gritty and innovative Red Hook, and eclectic, welcoming Park Slope, Brooklyn is full of exciting things to explore and experience.

Even if you don't care that restaurants, bars and clubs are cheaper once you cross the East River, and that most of NYC's singles and under 35s live on that side of the bridge, you'll be ignoring the biggest expression of artistic energy seen in this state since Basquiat lit up the East Village in the 1980s with his spray-painted stick figures.

If you're in the city and don't cross that slender span of steel, the Brooklyn Bridge, you're missing out.

10. Gaze at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

She's guarded the entrance to lower Manhattan since 1886, hoisting her torch high overhead in a salute to personal independence, and casting a censorious gaze east toward Europe, an 'unenlightened' entity to the original builders when it came to individual freedoms.

The Statue of Liberty, the gorgeous green woman, a gift from France, has welcomed millions of immigrants and inspires awe in all who see her. Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi built the 305-ft-tall, 225-ton statue, but Gustave Eiffel contributed the skeleton.

Just next to Lady Liberty is Ellis Island, formerly the holding tank, so to speak, for third-class passengers coming off immigrant ships from Europe. Ellis Island's exhibits include leftover trunks and bags from immigrants, pictures of gaunt, hollow-eyed arrivals (who might have left home in decent health but didn't always arrive that way after weeks crammed on a ship), and an interactive display that lets you search among a database of emigres for your own relatives.

It's well worth waiting in line for the ferry that takes you there.

A less-trammeled New York Harbor experience is Governor's Island - formerly a US Naval and Coast Guard administration base.

It's being run by the National Parks Service and afternoon tours make a great change of pace.

11. Gallery and club-hop on the West Side

Shopping, drinking, dancing - there's a lot of all of it going on in the abattoir-turned-hipster-hangout known as the Meatpacking District. Back when it was a working butchery and they slaughtered and stored their own product, nobody wanted to live among the fetid, fecund smells. Fast-forward to now and people can't seem to stay away from the place, or from neighboring Chelsea, the trendy, gay-friendly art enclave reinventing Manhattan's far west side.

The area has stellar restaurants, such as the original Pastis that first pioneered the Meatpacking trend, sedate and lovely Paradou, fetching Son Cubano, and laid-back Spotted Pig. Chelsea is surrounded by discount stores, like Filene's on Sixth Ave and the Chelsea Market on Eighth Ave. It's most famous for the galleries that run from 22nd St to 28th St between Twelfth, Eleventh and Tenth Aves. It's art galore - from powerhouse players like Gagosian, Matthew Marks and Mary Boone, to innovative new projects like gallery group, which put 12 up-and-comers into a former clubhouse on the nabe's far west side.

Chelsea has seven old-fashioned brownstones at Nos 406-418 on West 20th St. Called Cushman Row, it's a lovely example of Greek Revival style in the city. West 20th St also features Italianate style houses at 446-450. Just goes to show that it's a neighborhood with a little bit of everything - and that includes a lot of nightlife!

12. Catch the sunset from the observation deck

It's facing stiff competition from the newly refurbished Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, but the Empire State Building is still the pinnacle of glorious heights in New York City. From the 86th floor, Manhattan stretches forth in all its glorious immensity - and it only takes 45 seconds in an elevator to get there! This art deco classic is topped by a vivid spire bathed in a different color combination every night, usually coinciding with current events (green for St Patrick's Day, for example).

Conceived during the prosperous 1920s, the Empire State Building didn't actually go up until after the stock market crash of 1929.

Thrown together in 410 days for $41 million, the 102-story landmark opened in 1931 and immediately became the most exclusive business address in the city. Of course, very few could afford the equally exclusive rent: the building sat empty for years, earning it the nickname 'Empty State Building.' The top level was meant to serve as a zeppelin mooring mast, but the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 put a stop to that.

The top floor is still closed, but the views from the 86th floor are nothing to sneeze at - it's still the most popular place to propose in New York. To beat the crowds, come very early or late, or buy a combination ticket to the New York Skyride; that line is usually shorter.

13. Enjoy the benefits of conspicuous consumption

All the glories of NYC shopping are paraded along Fifth Avenue, where strings of tempting, tantalizing stores will turn your head left and right. Once the home of prominent families living in gracious, stately mansions, it was taken over by the retail industry in the early 1900s. It's now forever associated with fine shopping.

Luxury stores abound, but a few discount chains have moved in and sit cheek by jowl with classics like Brooks Brothers, Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier. Nowadays the most over-the-top fixture on Fifth Ave is Trump Tower, a gleaming complex of exclusive condominiums and a lobby replete with cascading waterfalls and ritzy boutiques. Just up the street is Grand Army Plaza, presided over by the famed Plaza Hotel, now filled with private condos. This romantic square abuts Central Park, and there are plenty of hansom cabs waiting to whisk you away. If you get tired of trawling through stores like Burberry, Chanel, Christian Dior and Yves St Laurent, St Patrick's Cathedral is around the corner and the New York Public Library just down the street.

14. find your inner punk rocker

At once glittery and grungy, the ersatz earthiness of the East Village spawned a revolution in eating, drinking and socializing that's made it one of New York's most exciting neighborhoods. This former rocker-filled enclave housed a young Madonna, jazz great Charlie Parker, guitarist extraordinaire Jimi Hendrix and social raconteur Margaret Sanger, arrested for distributing pamphlets about birth control.

Remnants of those wild times still infuse the neighborhood with a singular, electric energy, even as waves of gentrifi cation knock down squatter tenements and turn community-run cooperatives into luxury condos. It's safer and cleaner than it once was, but it's still the East Village: the best place for a poetry slam (Nuyorican Cafe), cutting-edge performance art or avant-garde gallery showing (La MaMa), or an all-night pub crawl along Second Ave (and increasingly Avenues A and B).

Across Houston St, just one block to the south, the long-forgotten Lower East Side has been rediscovered. Fueled by a daring group of restaurateurs, the Lower East Side is experiencing a culinary renaissance setting off a chain reaction all the way down to Chinatown.

These neighborhoods are an exciting blend of old and new that manage to coalesce into an entrancing now.

15. Show your taste buds a really good time

Dining in New York City is more than a pleasurable pastime, bigger than a ritual celebration, and rarely just about slaking bodily hunger.

For foodies, eating is an art, a philosophy, a transformation of yet another mundane act into a larger-than-life event, all the better to fit into the supercharged and turbo-energized pace of the city.

New and innovative cuisines are part of what makes NYC such a gustatory delight. Ingredients from the furthest corners of the globe show up in the tamales on street corners and the homemade chilis and pasties at local markets.

Fads and flavors come and go in the time it takes you to cab in from the airport, but one trend that's sticking around is an obsession for appetizers. Time-crunched Manhattanites order a bunch of these small plates and nosh like crazy. They've also discovered 'lounge food,' a replacement for hard-to-get reservations at in-demand restaurants. If Del Posto is booked when you're in town, eat at the 'lounge' (the bar in a less posh establishment): it's the same food and often half the sit-down price.

Certain locations are hot, hot, hot for restaurant openings - namely, the East Village, Lower Manhattan, the Meatpacking District and the Lower East Side. The Upper West Side is probably the most culinary-deprived neighborhood, but even it has a couple of solid standbys. You'll never go hungry in NYC, unless, of course, you can't decide where to eat.

16. Commune with the wild things

Giving new meaning to the term 'urban jungle,' the 265-acre Bronx Zoo works hard to entertain and educates visitors while preserving the natural needs and rhythms of the animals it houses. More than 4500 creatures totaling more than 600 species roam through the mostly unfenced outdoor settings, often separated from the public by nothing more than a moat or other natural barrier. Opened in 1899, the Bronx Zoo has survived by changing with the times. Check out the high-tech Congo Gorilla Forest, for example.

It's a 6.5 acre re-creation of an African rain forest, with treetop lookouts, natural pathways, overflowing greenery and about 300 animals, including two troops of lowland gorillas and some red river hogs.

Admission fees go toward caring for the zoo animals, and to the Wildlife Conservation Society's projects around the world. The Bronx Zoo often takes in wounded, sick or endangered animals that WCS partner programs discover in the wild. Three different rides, a monorail, an aerial tram and a shuttle offer you alternative perspectives of the park. Kids go wild for the mini-zoo built to their scale, and the monarch butterfly exhibit is positively otherworldly.