Five days in NYC

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Liquitaria is reputed to have the best juices and smoothies in New York. Not having tried all the others, I couldn't really comment on that, but it would certainly be hard to beat. There is a menu of about 10 different juice combos and 8 smoothies. There are also straight juices, including the inevitable wheatgrass and supplements to do everything, from improving your brain function to reducing your blood pressure. There are also herbal supplements for detoxing, improving your immune system, fighting fatigue, and more. If you're feeling a little less healthy, there is organic hot chocolate, coffee, or tea in various forms. If you've got any particular ailment, the staff will advise you on a therapeutic juice or tea for your symptoms.

There are also wonderful sandwiches, with eight different ones to choose from, many of them vegan, such as tempeh, lettuce, and tomato and the healthiest peanut butter-and-jelly you'll ever come across. They were definitely the best that I had while in New York. There are also sushi rolls, soup, muffins, cookies, and energy bars. This place is guaranteed to cure any hangover - I'd highly recommend the Green Monster to put the bounce back into your step and get you ready for a full day of exploring the rest of the East Village and beyond.

This is a takeout bakery that is all-vegan, something unknown if you come from the UK, and I suspect most of the world outside NYC! They sell cakes, muffins, cookies, desserts, bread, soup and savouries such as sandwiches, turnovers, lasagna, burritos, and pizza. There are quite a few options that are sugar-, gluten-, and wheat-free (although unless you're specifically looking for wheat-free, I'd recommend going for the others, as the wheat-free chocolate chip cookies were a bit dry and I suspect the wheat ones might have been better). The muffins were great, even when kept nearly 24 hours for breakfast the next morning. The wheat-free tofu cheesecake was okay but not fantastic - this was gluten-free and consequently didn't have a base, so it didn't really seem like proper cheesecake! They sell juices and teas as well - for any macrobiotics out there, there is bancha and twig tea if you're suffering withdrawal from these macro essentials!

It is well worth a try for any vegans - if only to gaze in awe at what is available in this amazingly vegan-friendly city!! Apparently there's another vegan bakery in Greenwich Village that is even better, but unfortunately we didn't have time to get to that one.

It is essential viewing, of course, for a first and probably every subsequent visit to New York, because then you can experience it at different times of day. We went at about midday, and the queues were much less than when we had passed by the previous day at about 3pm. Be prepared to queue whenever you go though, then queue again, and, in fact, then queue again. Pick up one of the info leaflets on the way in and you can spend your queueing time reading about how the building was constructed in just over a year and the immense numbers of people who worked on it, as well as overviews of what you can see in each direction.

However long you're standing in line, it will be more than worth it. Despite all the pictures you've seen of the views, nothing quite prepares you for what it's like. It gives you a fantastic sense of how Manhattan all fits together, and seeing Central Park in its entirety is amazing - the rest of NY may not be particularly green, although the leafy roads in East Village and a few little parks dotted around the place don't make it feel overly sparse of vegetation elsewhere, but the sheer scale of Central Park and the proportion of the island that it takes up is quite staggering.

There are audio handsets available for hire for $6, but we didn't bother with these. They will tell you that there aren't any maps or guides up at the observatory before you go up there in order to try to persuade you to hire one, but in fact there are diagrams on each side of the viewing platform with a key to all the main buildings and attractions which we found to be quite enough for our needs. Entry to the ESB is $14 for adults, and apparently the NY skyride simulated arial tour isn't recommended by those who've experienced it - it's much better to just head up the 86 floors and gaze in wonder!

More queueing in Manhattan - but again, another one that's well worth it. If there's more than one of you, then get one person to go and get the ferry tickets while the others stand in line, as you can get to the queue without going through the ticket office area. Tickets are about $11, which is an absolute bargain, as there are no fees to get onto Liberty Island or into the Immigration Museum at Ellis Island. The queue actually looks more daunting than it is, and all told, we were probably waiting about an hour to get tickets and then get on the ferry.

The Circle Line ferry stops at Liberty Island after circling round the statue and providing fantastic views back to Manhattan of the Financial District skyline. We didn't get off at Liberty Island, as we wanted to spend the few hours we had at the museum, and I'm glad we made the decision.

We spent about 3 hours on Ellis Island, but could easily have extended it by another couple of hours. There is an immense amount to see here, all really well presented and incredibly interesting - lots of original documents from the immigration process, statistics about patterns and numbers of immigration over the life of the island dealing with everyone who entered the country - in all, 12 million between 1890 and the 1920s. There is a database which you can type names into to see if records exist, so it's worth finding out from relatives beforehand whether they know of anyone in the family who did immigrate at this time, although this can be accessed through the website later anyway - www.EllisIsland.org.

There are recordings of interviews with people who came through Ellis Island talking about all aspects of the process, from the journey on the boat to going through the immigration process and through to travel beyond the island and details of the communities that sprang up in America as a result of this huge influx of people from all over the world.

We were struck by the amazing amount of support that people were given, the posters and information leaflets that were produced in a range of languages that would be difficult to find in most services today, citizenship classes, English classes, assistance with travel arrangements and reuniting families when women and children travelled over to meet husbands and fathers who had already emigrated. It is an absolutely fascinating day - not to be missed.

With a wealth of fantastic art galleries to choose from, this was the one that we picked, on the basis that it would be more manageable than the Met and there were more top attractions that we wanted to see than in the Frick Collection, which were my other two top contenders for which gallery to go to on this trip. It's not cheap at $20 entrance fee, but there is a substantial student discount if you have a student card, so make sure you have it with you, and entry is then only $12.

If you're short of time, then just head for levels 4 and 5, which are the main painting and sculpture floors, with so many astoundingly famous paintings that are so familiar, but seeing them 'in the flesh' finally made the wait worthwhile, although it's at times a bit overwhelming constantly turning a corner and being confronted by yet another painting that I've had a postcard of stuck on some wall in my house for years!

The water lilies have always been a favourite of mine, but there are other Monets that I've seen in galleries which I thought surpassed what I thought of as the water lilies. Finally seeing it in all its full, extended glory, all I could do was sit and gaze and be totally overwhelmed by its beauty. Definitely one the most intense art-induced experiences of my life.

There is a fantastic mixture in this gallery - from the more traditional Impressionist and Post-Impressionist romantic nature-inspired pieces, some fabulously coloured Goyas, which are beautifully intense when you see the real thing, through a huge collection of Picasso's work and most of the other famous names of the 20th century and into some great Pop Art pieces and more modern work by people such as Elizabeth Murray.

Other levels have a lot more installation-type work, which I found a lot more interesting than in a lot of other galleries I've been to - and a very spooky pitch-black corridor leading to a room where you're not quite sure where the floor ends and the walls begin (I remember a similar experience in the Guggenheim in Bilbao, probably the result of the same artist), which freaked me out quite a lot. There is some great film work in these lower galleries as well, definitely worth checking out if you have the time. Unfortunately, having a plane to catch meant that we didn't make it to the photography exhibitions.

Well worth the $12, and I'm glad this was the choice we made - the Met and the Frick will have to wait for another visit!

Manhattan would be one place where it would be interesting to have yourself hooked up to a pedometer to see just how many steps you can walk in a day. Although we took subways when we were going a significant distance, a large part of our time was spent walking around all the various districts, and I'd definitely recommend it as the best way to see the city and get a feel for what it's really like. The Lonely Planet New York City guide has walking tours of most of the main districts, which are a good starting point - we used at least part of these in Chinatown, Little Italy, and Brooklyn Heights. A lot of the time, though, it's just fun to wander and see where things take you. We usually had a final goal in mind but went down any street that appealed to us and in the process saw some great buildings and sights that we would probably otherwise have missed.

East Village is one of the best places for wandering around. We went there on a Saturday, and it was really chilled out - nothing like London on a Saturday morning! St Mark's Place is a must - a beautiful tree-lined street with some great thrift shops and and the Physical Graffiti building of Led Zeppelin fame that is now a thrift shop. There's a great selection of bars, diners, and cafes in East Village, so it's good night or day - although when we went down there at about 11pm on Sunday, it was pretty quiet and a lot of places were closing - but, as usual, you always find somewhere open in New York, and it's usually just what you were looking for!

Chinatown on a Saturday afternoon was quite chaotic, especially as there was an event going on promoting all the restaurants in the area, so there were hundreds of people on the streets selling food and a fantastic atmosphere. Little Italy blends into the outskirts of Chinatown and is a great place to sit at one of the pavement cafes and watch Manhattan walk by for a while.

Greenwich Village seemed to have lost a lot of its past bohemian feel on first entering it, and it has definitely been usurped nowadays by East Village in that respect. But it's worth a trip to Washington Square Park, which, when we got there at dusk, was full of street performers, beautiful lanterns dotted around, and people sitting around, playing guitars and chilling out. It was a wonderful and very un-urban thing to experience in the middle of a city, especially in the evening in a park when they are more usually deserted and not really advisable to enter! The financial district is another one to wander through.

We came across ground zero purely by accident, and there is an intense energy resonating from the site still. Plans can now be seen at the site of the proposed memorial park that is to be built there, and the subway there is now up and running.

Of course, if you're going to walk in Manhattan, then the obvious place to do it is Central Park. We spent a couple of hours wandering around and only made it about a third of the way up, past the Woolman rink, although sadly it wasn't ice-skating weather, and past people dotted around reading books and doing yoga in Sheep Meadow and on up to Strawberry Fields opposite the Dakota Building and the flower adorned Imagine Mosaic commemorating John Lennon's favourite bit of the park. The design of the park has succeeded in what I presume was its intention of being a rural oasis in the midst of the vast expanse of the city around it. It would be a great place to just go and hang around and wander slowly - if only there weren't so damn many other things to do in this city! But whether you're travelling at marching pace or strolling leisurely, this city is one that is conducive to walking. It's easily navigable and compact enough to be able to see a lot of sights in a relatively short space of time and a lot of diverse and really interesting areas.