Reuters Business Traveller

New York – Overview

Spreading along two rivers, New York City, America’s loud and lively cultural and commercial hub is a multicultural conurbation of eight million people spread out across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island … and Manhattan. The latter, which harbours most of the city’s commercial activity and best hotels, is just 13 miles long and three miles wide, and split into three sections: Downtown (south of 14th street, home to Wall Street); Midtown (reaches up to 59^th street, the city’s business centre) and Uptown (anything north of Midtown). Midtown is a grid, with Avenues running north-south and Streets running east-west; 5th Avenue bisects the city into east and west. Streets in Lower Manhattan and the Financial District are named not numbered.

Once notorious for crime, NYC now boasts the lowest crime rate of any major US city. It is also a city of dreams: re-live the movies and take strolls under the neon signs of Times Square before a Broadway show; retrace Woody Allen’s steps in the multitude of films he set in the Upper East Side; and, in season, sit atop a horse-drawn carriage through snowfall in Central Park, or go ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center.

Money: US dollars (US$).

Try not to land yourself with $100 notes because taxi drivers won’t change them. Credit cards are widely used.