Best pizza in NY. Be prepared to wait. Check to see if they are shut down by the health department or tax collectors before going. Get the square pie with pepperoni and hot peppers.

My favorite place on Bedford Avenue, this bookstore has both new and used titles. If you're patient and look close enough, you can usually find a book that's worth more than they're asking. Not to mention their stellar selection of magazine titles. Good for design, art, photography, sociology, fiction, and everything in between.

Recommended by my friend and talented illustrator, Isabel Castillo Guijarro, this spot makes incredible cappuccinos and is in one of my favorite NYC buildings, the WoolWorth Building

Nature is the only thing I sometimes feel that I miss in the city and though I love going to Central Park and Prospect Park it’s still a bit of a hike for everyday life. Thankfully there’s a ton of small gardens and parks all around the city and in the summer some of them turns in to secluded hideouts. My favorite is cramped in between 6th avenue, a playground and another street but it still feels like (almost) being in a little forest when sitting there.

The crown jewel of the Queens Museum is a nearly 10,000-square-foot architectural model of the city originally built for the 1964 World's Fair.