A Festive Winter Visit in New York

Airguide Online, Dec 30, 2004 by Josephine Bacon

Even further downtown still lie the Lower East Side, the Tenderloin and Hell's Kitchen, the original immigrant neighborhoods, still a little run down but very picturesque and thus inevitably prey to gentrification by the artistic crowd who have more sense than money. The Museum of the Lower East Side is at 97 Orchard Street, where the numbered streets give way to those with real names. Over 10,000 people lived at that one address between the years 1870 and 1915. The landlord refused to put in individual toilets for each apartment when ordered to do so by the city in the 1930s, so he closed the upper part of the building (the downstairs part is still occupied by shops). The museum acquired it in its untouched condition and it is now a major tourist attraction. There are great places to eat round here, Ratners, the Second Avenue Deli and Katinka's, a Russo-Polish restaurant, to name but a few. Canal Street, the Chinese section, has an amazing Chinese street market, probably the best outside Asia.

Colder than London this time of the year New York is in a festive (all right - commercial) mood. It's really buzzing and you can skate in Central Park (above) or the Rockefeller Center (and other places too). With a choice of seven airlines from London fares are currently very competitive (a euphemism for cheap). Our thanks to NYC for the pictures.

http://www.nyctourist.com and http://www.nycvisit.com

Our contributor is Josephine Bacon, a London-based food writer and professional translator/interpreter who lived in California for four years and is in New York regularly.

http:// www.americanization.com