Things To Do
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- WALK DOWN BLEEKER STREET. It's not just that this way you can get from Meatpacking District to Soho; the important thing is - it's different: placed aslant in the middle of New York's tidy squared copy-book geometry and looking surprisingly European. Among the shops that have chosen to settle down here are not only Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren but also the Magnolia Bakery (401 Bleecker Street), much loved by native New Yorkers, and a string of small pubs and cafés.
- DROP INTO THE CHELSEA HOTEL. You don't have to stay the night but make sure you do spend a moment there. The deceptively modest Chelsea Hotel is one of the richest New York hotels legend-wise. Arthur Miller, Vladimir Nabokov and Jackson Pollock are among those who have stayed there, and the spiritual father of Pop Art Andy Warhol has immortalised the hotel in his Chelsea Girls movie (1967).
Chelsea Hotel has seen it all, from crazy debauchery to gruesome death. Room 100 is the place where Sid Vicious, the Sex Pistols base player, got rid of his girlfriend Nancy with the help of a hunting knife. Soon, however, Sid's own life came to a sad end when he died of a heroin overdose before the trial even started.
If you don't believe that buildings can speak, take a solitary tour of the Chelsea Hotel staircase, the same one that Mark Twain and Bob Dylan have tread, and you will know then that everything that's ever happened in these walls has left an almost physical trace. In fact, quite a few off the current visitors seem to be caught in a space/time warp themselves: silver-haired hippies are part of the Chelsea Hotel's colourful ambience.
222 West 23rd Street (Seventh/Eight Avenues), Chelsea
Price: USD 175-485
- CROSS THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE, one of the most beautiful bridges in New York. The legend alone is one of a kind: the idea of building a suspension bridge is said to have come to the engineer John Roebling in 1855 when he finally got fed up with the Atlantic Avenue - Fulton Street ferry running consistently late.
- TAKE A TOUR OF THE CHELSEA GALLERIES. New York loves art, and you are not likely to find such a high concentration of galleries anywhere else.
- CHECK OUT CHELSEA MARKET, a former biscuit factory turned into one of the largest and coolest gastronomic wonder worlds in New York: from the 202 concept shop/restaurant (clothes, accessories, great kitchen) to Ruth's (serving some of the best cheesecakes in the city), Chelsea Wine Vault with an excellent choice of French, Italian and New World wines, to say nothing of the seafood tasting room with all sorts of wonders on offer.
75 9th Avenue (between West 15th and West 16th Streets).
- TAKE A RIDE ON THE STATEN ISLAND FERRY - a marvellous romantic cruise with light wind in your hair and a view on the Statue of Liberty and the South Manhattan skyscrapers. Free of charge.