It's Christmas year-round at Panna II, as the walls and ceilings are completely covered with festive string lights. A great restaurant for a group dinner, Panna II offers small sharable plates in a fun and lively atmosphere. It's BYOB with no corkage fee so stop by the liquor store beforehand to pick up all the wine, beer and liquor you can carry.

You need to make a reservation for L'Artusi years in advance... or at least the week before, if you try a walk-in then ask to be seated at the bar, as always in New York that is the best seats at any of my favorites restaurants.

Lunch there before a visit at the MET with a walk in Central Park

My favorite wall in New York. The wall outside St Patrick’s old cathedral on Mulberry Street in Manhattan. It changes with the light, so beautiful. It was also in the movie “The Pope Of Greenwich Village” and that’s just plain cool.

When I first moved to New York, enamoured by its parks and museums and design firms and restaurants and bars, I never imagined that there could be much more to its geography than that. How wrong I was. My first drive across the George Washington Bridge was jaw-dropping - the cliffs of New Jersey are astonishingly tall, covered in a dense thicket of trees. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Drive up 87 to the Catskills or the Adirondacks and you'll witness the Hudson River winding its way through spectacular scenery and unforgiving seasons. Now I can't get enough; just two hours up the road, it's like the city never existed. Perfect recuperation after a long week.