Italian Cuisine, great Restaurant with huge very lovely Backyard, selfmade bread and supergood Brunch on the Weekends!

I’m a big fan of libraries (tons of books, free to take out, I mean what’s not to love?) and even though you can’t actually take out any books at the big beautiful library in Midtown – it’s still worth a visit. I love walking around in the big halls, the architecture is so beautiful and there’s always small exhibitions or things to see. Don’t forget to look up when entering the main reading-hall. Feels like book-heaven!

Tucked away on the second floor, it’s easy to forget you’re in the middle of Manhattan. Order the Ika geso (squid legs) and the nankotsu (chicken cartilage), my personal favorites. You might notice people waiting around a nondescript door inside the restaurant; this is actually the entrance to the speakeasy bar Angel’s Share.

Nothing is more quintessentially New York than a diner. This eatery not only serves excellent, traditional diner fare, but does so in an eclectic environment that mixes Baroque decadence with Midtown grit.

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.