Joseph Leonard is one of my favorite cozy spots for brunch on the weekend. After a long week of work their avocado toast and a bloody mary hits the spot. Get there early or expect to wait, it's small and limited seating. Their sister restaurant Jeffreys Grocery across the street is also very good, but no expresso drinks which and I need my morning latte.

The operators of the Peter Pan bakery make the best donuts I've ever tasted. This place is charming to its core. Decor and presentation: circa 1971 & virtually unchanged since.

This botanical garden is massive. If you like to be surrounded by foliage, bring a picnic on a nice day.

A museum and sculpture garden in the Long Island City section of Queens, New York City, designed and created by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

In 1963, the Italian-born sculptor Costantino Nivola filled a playground that covers an entire city block with avant-garde abstractions. In the middle of an Upper Manhattan housing project, there are cuboid cutouts sculpted in cement, a fountain made with two diamond-shaped boulders, concrete play horses, and a sand-casted relief carved high into a wall. In the northeast corner, a matriarchal figure known as “The Nanny” rises from the ground. The artist’s sculptures were built in an era when urban development incorporated art in its effort to uplift communities and express democratic ideals. “A work designed for a public space is less a work of art than a civic act,” Nivola once said. “It concerns the ways in which we live together, and in which we influence each other.”