Travel to Paris

Paris is a huge city with several district articles containing sightseeing, restaurant, nightlife and accommodation listings — consider printing them all.

Paris, the cosmopolitan capital of France, is - with 2.2 million people living in the dense (105 km²) central city and almost 12 million people living in the whole metropolitan area - one of the largest agglomerations in Europe. Located in the north of the country on the river Seine, Paris has the reputation of being the most beautiful and romantic of all cities, brimming with historic associations and remaining vastly influential in the realms of culture, art, fashion, food and design. Dubbed the City of Light (la Ville Lumière) and Capital of Fashion, it is home to the world's finest and most luxorious fashion designers and cosmetics, such as Chanel, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, Guerlain, Lancôme, L'Oréal, Clarins, etc. A large part of the city, including the River Seine, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city has the second highest number of Michelin-restaurants in the world (after Tokyo) and contain numerous iconic landmarks, such as the world's most visited tourist sight the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre Museum, Moulin Rouge, Lido etc, making it the most popular tourist destination in the world with 45 million tourists annually.

Introducing Paris

Well informed, eloquent and oh-so-romantic, the ‘City of Light’ is a philosopher, a poet, a crooner. As it always has been, Paris is a million different things to a million different people.

Paris has all but exhausted the superlatives that can reasonably be applied to any city. Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower – at sunrise, at sunset, at night – have been described countless times, as have the Seine and the subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences between the Left and Right Banks. But what writers have been unable to capture is the grandness and even the magic.

Paris probably has more familiar landmarks than any other city in the world. As a result, first-time visitors often arrive in the French capital with all sorts of expectations: of grand vistas, of intellectuals discussing weighty matters in cafés, of romance along the Seine, of naughty nightclub revues, of rude people who won’t speak English. If you look hard enough, you can probably find all of those. But another approach is to set aside the preconceptions of Paris and to explore the city’s avenues and backstreets as if the tip of the Eiffel Tower or the spire of Notre Dame wasn’t about to pop into view at any moment.

You’ll soon discover (as so many others before you have) that Paris is enchanting almost everywhere, at any time, even ‘in the summer, when it sizzles’ and ‘in the winter, when it drizzles’, as Cole Porter put it. And you’ll be back. Trust us.

St-Denis

For 1200 years St-Denis was the burial place of French royalty; today it is a quiet suburb just north of Paris’ 18e arrondissement. The ornate royal tombs, adorned with some truly remarkable statuary, and Basilique de St-Denis that contains them (the world’s first major Gothic structure), are worth a visit. St-Denis can also boast the Stade de France, the futuristic stadium just south of Canal de St-Denis.

Cooking in Paris.

What better place to discover the secrets of la cuisine française than in Paris, the capital of gastronomy? Courses are available at different levels and lengths of time and the cost of tuition varies widely. One of the most popular – and affordable – for beginners is the Les Coulisses du Chef Cours de Cuisine Olivier Berté (01 40 26 14 00; www.coursdecuisineparis.com; 2nd fl, 7 rue Paul Lelong, 2e; Bourse), which offers three-hour courses at 10.30am from Wednesday to Saturday with an additional class from 6pm to 9pm on Friday. ‘Carnets’ of five/20 courses are available.

Much more expensive are the Paris Cooking Classes with Patricia Wells (www.patriciawells.com) led by the incomparable American food critic and author at her cooking studio in rue Jacob, 6e. The class runs from Monday to Friday, is limited to seven participants and includes market visits, tastings, local transport and daily lunch.

Other cooking schools in Paris include the following:

Coin-Cuisine (01 45 79 01 40; www.coin-cuisine.fr, in French; 110 rue du Théatre, 15e; Av Émile Zola) Courses of various themes and levels lasting from one to four hours.

Cook’n with Class (06 31 73 62 77; www.cooknwithclass.com; 21 rue Custine, 18e; Château Rouge) Morning/evening/full-day classes are available.

École Le Cordon Bleu (01 53 68 22 50; www.cordonbleu.edu; 8 rue Léon Delhomme, 15e; Vaugirard or Convention) Dating back to 1895, the Cordon Bleu school has professional courses as well as one-day themed workshops on topics like terrines and viennoiserie (baked goods), and two- and four-day courses on classic and modern sauces and the secrets of bread and pastry making.

Source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com; http://wikitravel.org

Travel to New York City

New York City is an enormous city. Each of its five boroughs is the equivalent of a large city in its own right and may itself be divided into districts. These borough and district articles contain sightseeing, restaurant, nightlife and accommodation listings — consider printing them all.

New York City [1] (also referred to as "New York", "NYC", "The Big Apple", or just "the City" by locals), is the biggest city in the United States. It lies at the mouth of the Hudson River in the southernmost part of the state, which is part of the Mid-Atlantic region of the USA.

The New York Metropolitan Area spans parts of three states—lower New York, northern New Jersey, and southwestern Connecticut. It is the USA's largest metro area, with a population of 18.7 million. As of 2007, it was 5th in the world, after Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Seoul.

New York City is a center for media, culture, food, fashion, art, research, finance, and trade. It has one of the largest and most famous skylines on earth, dominated by the iconic Empire State Building.

Understan the travel to New York City

New York City is one of the global centers of international finance, politics, communications, film, music, fashion, and culture, and is among the world's most important and influential cities. It is home to many world-class museums, art galleries, and theaters. Many of the world's largest corporations have their headquarters here. The headquarters of the United Nations is in New York and most countries have a consulate here. This city's influence on the globe—and all its inhabitants—is hard to overstate, as decisions made within its boundaries often have impacts and ramifications literally across the world.

Immigrants (and their descendants) from over 180 countries live here, making it one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. Travelers are attracted to New York City for its culture, energy and cosmopolitanism.

Orientation

At the center of New York City sits the borough of Manhattan, a long, narrow island nestled in a natural harbor. It is separated from The Bronx on the north east by the Harlem River (actually a tidal strait); from Queens and Brooklyn to the east and south by the East River (also a tidal strait); and from the State of New Jersey to the west and north by the Hudson River. (Staten Island lies to the south west, across Upper New York Bay.)

In Manhattan, the terms “uptown” and “north” mean in the direction of the Bronx, north east on the compass, while “downtown” and “south” mean in the direction of the Battery, to the south west. To avoid confusion, simply use “uptown” and “downtown.”

The term “the city” may refer either to New York City as a whole, or to Manhattan alone, depending on the context. The Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens are sometimes referred to as “the outer boroughs.”

Climate in New York

New York City has a humid continental climate and experiences all four seasons with hot and humid summers (June-Sept), cool and dry autumns (Sept-Dec), cold winters (Dec-Mar), and wet springs (Mar-June). Average highs for January are around 38°F (3°C) and average highs for July are about 84°F (29°C). However, temperatures in the winter can go down to as low as 0°F (-18°C) and in the summer, temperatures can go as high as 100°F (38°C) or slightly higher. The temperature in any season is quite variable and it is not unusual to have a sunny 50°F (10°C) day in January followed by a snowy 25°F (-3°C) day. New York can also be prone to snowstorms and nor'easters (large storms similar to a tropical storm), which can dump as much as 2 feet (60cm) of snow in 24-48 hours. Tropical storms can also hit New York City in the summer and early fall.

New York People

The diverse population runs the gamut from some of America's wealthiest celebrities and socialites to homeless people. There are hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the city. New York's population has been diverse since the city's founding by the Dutch. Successive waves of immigration from virtually every nation in the world make New York a giant social experiment in cross-cultural harmony.

The city's ethnic heritage illuminates different neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. In Manhattan, Little Italy remains an operating (if touristy and increasingly Chinese) Italian enclave, though many New Yorkers consider Arthur Avenue in the Bronx to be the "real" Little Italy. Manhattan's Chinatown remains a vibrant center of New York City's Chinese community, though in recent years the very large Chinese community in Flushing, Queens has rivaled if not, eclipsed it in importance, and three other Chinatowns have formed in New York City: the Brooklyn Chinatown in Sunset Park, Brooklyn; the Elmhurst Chinatown in Elmhurst, Queens; and the Avenue U Chinatown located in the Homecrest section of Brooklyn. Traces of the Lower East Side's once-thriving Jewish community still exist amid the newly-gentrified neighborhood's trendy restaurants and bars, but there are Chassidic communities in Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Harlem has been gentrifying and diversifying lately but remains a center of African-American culture in New York. East (Spanish) Harlem still justifies its reputation as a large Hispanic neighborhood. Little known to most tourists are the large Dominican neighborhoods of Hamilton Heights and Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. Brooklyn's Greenpoint is famous for its large and vibrant Polish community. Queens and Brooklyn are known for being home to many of New York's more recent immigrant groups, which since 1990 have included large numbers of Russians, Uzbeks, Chinese, French, Yugoslavians, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Africans, Arabs (from throughout the Middle East and northern Africa), Mexicans, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Brazilians, Colombians and Jamaicans.

Source: nycgo.com; wikitravel.org