The best views on Brooklyn and Manhattan. Forget the sweaty and expensive tourist buses, the ferry is just as much as a subway ride and breathtakingly beautiful. 

The Chelsea Market is filled with great restaurants and speciality food stores and pop up shops. I love stopping in and getting a gourmet grilled cheese from Lucy's Whey or a healthy juice from raw food restaurant One Lucky Duck, while shopping for dinner ingredients at the Italian market Buon Italia. For a great sit down restaurant, I love The Green Table, which serves great farm to table food.

This is probably my favorite restaurant in Manhattan, it's Spanish Tapas but like you never had it before. You can literally order any dish from the menu, everything is amazing. Tip, it tends to get busy - so head in and sign up for a table, then go around the corner to their bar Jamón only challenge is that you might stay there all night.

Old military ruins. The girls sunbath topless here.

Only a 40-minute subway ride from my apartment and a world unto itself, Coney Island is always a new experience and like seaside weather, it’s always different. I stumbled upon this kite festival one grey fall afternoon. Other visits have yielded dance parties on the boardwalk, roller coaster rides, shandies in plastic cups on the beach, a trip to "Little Odessa", and a myriad of interesting characters and experiences.