Wherever you are in New York City, a feeling will come over you: "I feel as though I'm in a film, or as if I've seen this scene in a film before." Yes, and no wonder — the city, with its towering or crumbling buildings, has served as a filming location for countless films and series. Indeed, the fictional city of Gotham in "Batman" is modelled on New York.
If you are heading to this beautiful city, stay on bustling 8th Avenue in the heart of Manhattan Island. You want the bustle of this city because that is its soul. Whether in the middle stretch between West 40th and 45th Streets, or near its southern end at West 34th Street, the area is packed with hotels.
In the middle section you will see giant screens adorning the buildings; you will be next to the towering New York Times building and find Times Square just metres away. This beautiful, compact square — teeming with tourists from every corner of the world — is full of lively activities: dancing and singing to the tunes of Taylor Swift or Alicia Keys' famous song "New York"!
And while you are in Times Square you will simultaneously be in the heart of Broadway, the famous theatre district and the place that American director Woody Allen was so enamoured with.
Spend your first day or evening here beneath the giant screens of Times Square, which pulse with tremendous energy and illuminate the entire square without the need for a single street lamp.
The most important place in New York is Liberty Island, home to the iconic and beautiful Statue of Liberty. Take a photo beneath it and admire its splendour, then head by boat — just minutes away — to Ellis Island, where you can visit the National Museum of Immigration to learn about the history of New York and the United States, which was formed initially from European immigrants before becoming ethnically diverse.
Once you leave there, the iconic Wall Street is not far away. It is iconic in name and stature, not in size — it is very small — but it is flanked on one side by the New York Stock Exchange and on the other by the Federal Reserve building.
Close by, on Fulton Street in the Financial District — where you may feel as though you are in a Batman film due to the narrow streets separating the towering skyscrapers — you will find One World Trade Center, the tower built beside the site of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, which collapsed in the events of 11 September 2001.
In this very spot you can spend the rest of your day. The sites of the two former towers have been transformed into two pools from which fountains flow, with the names of the victims of the 11 September attacks carved into their edges.
Behind them are two places: the first is the 9/11 Memorial (the National September 11 Memorial Museum), one of the most beautiful places worth visiting — especially if you are among those who lived through those events moment by moment, as the writer of these lines did.
The second is a shopping centre in the form of an architectural masterpiece: The Oculus, which you enter from the roof before descending to the ground floor to shop. Still in the Financial District, the iconic Brooklyn Bridge is very close by and is well worth walking across, taking you from Manhattan Island to the neighbouring borough of Brooklyn.
Among the other beautiful places in New York is Central Park, located at Columbus Circle at the northern end of 8th Avenue — that is, of course, if you are a lover of greenery, trees and grass (in winter, snow covers it entirely).
Around Central Park there are important museums: the Museum of the City of New York if you want to understand the history and story of the city; the Museum of Natural History; and the Guggenheim Museum.
If you are not a museum enthusiast, you have the option of visiting iconic landmarks such as Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Plaza, where you ascend to the observatory to enjoy stunning views of the city from above, or the Empire State Building observatory in the same area.
Among the city's finest restaurants is Buddakan, an Asian restaurant on 9th Avenue whose basement has been built like a grand, lavish hall in the centre of the restaurant, giving visitors the feeling of being inside a dream.
There is also Tavern on the Green, in the heart of Central Park, where the assassination scene of Donald Kent (Dennis Haysbert) in the series Blue Bloods was filmed in 2015.
And there is Margaritaville restaurant in the Times Square area — a two-storey cube-shaped venue owned by the late singer Jimmy Buffett. For shopping in New York, there is Macy's at Herald Square, and 5th Avenue, where Trump Tower and the iconic Louis Vuitton building — shaped like a handbag — are located. And 6th Avenue — the Avenue of the Americas — home to the headquarters of major media companies and some Hollywood studios.