I have old friends in San Francisco who grudgingly tell me that the High Line is everything that's wrong with New York. Well, too bad. To me, it embodies a culture that's constantly reinventing itself: a defunct elevated railway that was becoming a burden to the city ("we used to climb up there to throw garbage bags full of rotting Korean food at the Hasids!", noted a successful photographer's assistant) becoming a startling example of urban greening for the public good. The expert landscaping makes it feel like walking on a Montauk beach - but a stone's throw from some of New York's most progressive galleries and hotels.

Rudy's Pastry Shop is a little place my boyfriend and I like to go to on Sunday mornings. The place is super small and cozy and full of all the sweetest treats you can find. They have such a large selection of pastries and the coffee is just as delicious. The location is cute as well and a nice place to stroll afterward. There is a cute record store right around the corner.

You can't say you've seen NYC until you've seen it from a boat. Hop on the ferry from anywhere to anywhere and you'll see what I mean. Not only will you see excellent old buildings and factories--the inner workings of the old industrial city--but you'll head out under working bridges and see the skyscrapers in all their towering glory. And once you've done it, do it again, at night.

Bill Brand presents an animated movie to passengers on the B and Q subway trains coming into Manhattan from Brooklyn. The project was modeled after the zoetrope, a 19th-century optical toy, which animated images inside a revolving cylinder, so that they appeared to move when viewed through narrow slits. Brand mounted 228 hand-painted panels in self-contained, illuminated units along the three-hundred-foot platform. Hop on a Manhattan-bound B or Q train at the Dekalb Avenue stop (corner of Dekalb Avenue and Flatbush Avenue Extension). Look out any window on the right side of the train.

Handmade pasta in a former garage.