United States / New York 

Our Texan friends who live in New York assure us that Javelina serves the best Tex-Mex in the city.

The food was good – the setting spectacular. This is dining in a grand, bordering on almost over-the-top, full Adirondack dining room – think logs, stone, antlers, the whole shebang.

This restaurant’s branch in the Upper East Side is located in the Jewish Museum, but is open to those not visiting the museum and just stopping by for lunch. It’s both a full-service restaurant and takeout spot and located on 92nd street and 5th Avenue.

Country Inn with a nice restaurant not far from sights in lower Hudson Valley.

Maybe you think it’s strange to enter a museum for lunch, but Café Sabarsky is well worth it.

The Beekman Arms is the oldest Inn in the country. There is a good restaurant and atmospheric tavern on site – the tavern has been here for over 200 years and people like George Washington used to frequent it.

This beer bar and bottle shop offers a great selection of craft beer from the New England area and beyond.

Very good locally sourced farm-to-table dining in Rhinebeck, New York.

This hip Tribeca bar serves delicious craft cocktails.

This historic restaurant has been in Central Park since 1934, however the interior is completely redesigned and the food is fresh, inviting, and innovative with creative takes on classics. It’s an especially wonderful restaurant to stop by in November and December when the interior explodes with holiday cheer. Make reservations ahead of time!

This beer hall offers a wide selection of tasty and interesting beers, as well great burger burgers and scrumptious bar bites.

“Twisted foods from traditional roots” is their tagline and the restaurant offers up regional cuisine with a farm-to-table mentality and a slightly eclectic menu.

A gorgeous gothic revival mansion with intact interiors overlooking the Hudson available to tour. The mansion was built by architect Alexander Jackson Davis in 1838 and later acquired and added onto by Jay Gould, at the time the richest man in the country (and a rather unscrupulous businessman).

Frederick Church, the most famous painter in the US in the 1870’s (Hudson River School) built this magnificent Persian- style castle high on a hill overlooking the Hudson River Valley. The interiors are largely intact and filled with paintings. The setting is as spectacular as the building. Get reservations in advance.

This museum contains a remarkable array of more than 34 million natural science artifacts including a Fossil Hall (with over 600 fossils), galleries of gems, minerals, and ocean life, an entire space center with a planetarium and featuring the Willamette Meteor, and a butterfly conservatory with 500 + butterflies from all over the world. It’s […]

The Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters is set in Fort Tyron Park in Upper Manhattan on a hilltop overlooking the Hudson River. The building itself is made up of various European monasteries and historic buildings. This branch of the Met houses medieval European history and art.

A historic fort rebuilt at the south end of Lake Champlain. Originally built by the French during the French and Indian war, later captured by British, and then the Americans in the American Revolutionary War. The star shaped fort has now been restored and has costumed interpreters and living history displays.

Set on 5th Avenue’s Museum Mile, this art gallery is housed in a beaux-arts mansion. It hosts art of Vermeer, Titian, El Greco, Van Dyck and Rembrandt.

This museum leads very interesting tours through the Lower East Side’s historic tenements dating back from the 19th century. Explore very well preserved tenements with original artifacts from the time as you learn the stories about the families who lived there in the years leading up to and following the turn of the century.

This is a really unique attraction. On a grassy field in the upper Hudson River Valleysee 100+ year old airplanes (WW1 and older) still fly. It’s a pretty amazing 2 hour show. There is even a cheesy melodrama which does not seem to have changed since the 1950’s. But the sight of a rickety 1913 […]

Housed in a mansion from 1914, this museum highlights Austrian and German art, especially that of Klee, Kirchner, and Klimt. Don’t miss the huge gold Klimt piece Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. It’s a small museum, but has a rotating exhibit that is interesting. There is an excellent cafe, Cafe Sabarsky, attached to the museum […]

Actually a 22 acre “city within a city”, Rockefeller center was built by John D Rockefeller Jr at the height of the Great Depression. It was the US’s first retail/entertainment/office center of 19 buildings and declared a National Landmark in 1987. Most interesting in this space is the GE Building offering a Top of the Rock observation tower (actually taller than the Empire State Building’s) and Rockefeller Plaza.

This is collection of houses from the pre-revolutionary period of New York. This NationalHistoric Landmark is the oldest street in America with its original buildings and the walking tour visits several of the historic houses.

NYC’s Chinatown is a colorful area of the city, full of temples, exotic goods, bakeries, and restaurants. It’s a densely populated neighborhood, one of the best Chinatown’s in the US, and a great place to enjoy culture while sampling dim sum, dumplings, pork buns and hand-pulled noodles. Locals hang out in leafy Columbus Park for […]

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum is a tribute to the events that affected the United States when 2 airplanes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in NYC on 9/11/2001.

The Empire State Building’s outdoor observation deck on its 86th floor offers spectacular views over the NYC skyline.

At 1,776, One World Trade Center is the tallest building in the United States. Its observation deck 102 stories above the streets of Manhattan offers truly incredible views of New York.

If you want to get the feel of NYC in one setting, head to Times Square. The sheer number of people combined with thousands of cabs and giant billboards lit up on the sides of skyscrapers advertising Broadway shows can be overwhelming, but gives you the experience of NYC out of a movie.

Spanning 52 acres, the BBG is a green escape from Brooklyn. It offers numerous plants and gardens (Shakespeare, Japanese, Discovery, Fragrance, Flowering Cherry).

The flagship of New York’s public library system, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is a research, rather than lending, library. The beautiful marble building houses several stately reading rooms, fascinating book collections, and interesting exhibits. We highly recommend taking the free guided tour.

This newest branch of the Met opened in 2016. It houses 20th and 21st century art. Your three-day admission includes the Met and the Cloisters. The lower ground floor has a great drinking spot: Flora Bar.

Catch a ferry, operated by Statue Cruises out of New York Harbor at Battery Park to see both Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

This is way the heck up in the Bronx at the New York Botanical Gardens. However, if you choose to make the trek you’ll be privy to a Christmas tradition. Over 20 miniature trains, ferries, and trollies wind through 175 NYC landscapes and the 5 boroughs. Finish your visit with a stroll through cold, and often snowy gardens on the Winter Wonderland Tree Tour. It’s open late November to late January.

This is a charming river view house on 10 acres that was home to author Washington Irving who was best known for the short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The tour guides are dressed up in looks of the time. Irving designed the grounds himself with pretty garden paths and water vistas.

This 40-room mansion was built by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. The mansion features works by Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, and Alexander Calder. Don’t miss the cavernous Coach Barn, with its collection of classic cars and horse-drawn carriages.

We found this to be an enjoyable way to learn about the “camps” of Lake Placid. For many many years very wealthy people have escaped in the summer to Lake Placid to their “camps” (local lingo for mansions with boat houses) for the three months during which they can be accessed by boat – there […]

This ice skating rink is set in the heart of Central Park and is a star player in numerous Hollywood movies. Located at 59th Street and 6th Avenue, it has spectacular views of the skyline of Manhattan.

In the heart of Chelsea, this market turned a former factory into a shopping area and market hall that is a food-lover’s paradise. Fun to explore even without eating, this market hall houses a great variety of foods and goods and is very enjoyable to wander.

The High Falls Gorge is similar to the Flume Gorge trail but a lot shorter – a series of boardwalks above rising waterfalls. Perhaps the best part is the drive here goes under the face of Whiteface Mountain – the main ski area for Lake Placid and winds along a beautiful river.

The walk across the Brooklyn Bridge into or out of Manhattan is delightful at 1.3 miles long.

Literally a castle on a hill overlooking the Hudson.