Visit New York - and see the world! Nowhere else offers such diversity in such a compact and exciting way; and no other city has the energy and arrogance to make it work so well.
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| Statue of Liberty |
This year New York City is preparing to make its Christmas celebrations bigger and better than ever before.
The festive season in New York traditionally kicks off with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 23rd.
The parade is now in its 77th year and hundreds of thousands of people line the streets of as the procession of marching bands, floats and huge balloons of famous cartoon characters make their way through Manhattan to Herald Square.
As Christmas trees are put up across the city, one popular pastime for New Yorkers is ice skating. A number of rinks are established for the winter, with the most famous being Central Park's Lasker and Wollman rinks. The skating below the Rockefeller Centre is also worth heading to.
New York also likes to shine for the festive season. The Empire State Building this year will be illuminated with red and green lights for Christmas and with blue and white for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
Grand Central Station will light up with a laser show every half hour throughout December and Bronx Zoo has brought in expert light technicians to add a new dimension in the holiday season.
The festive season comes to an end with the city's New Year celebrations. Time Square is the focus of the fun as the crowds brave the cold weather to cheer in the New Year as the famous ball drops.
New York City is made up of the five boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island and Manhattan. Within these boundaries live 7.2 million people, including significant populations of Spanish, Irish, Italian, Chinese, Russians and Jewish. It's an eclectic mix of the world's cultures and nationalities, and means that anything you could possibly want, in NY, "You got it!". You can eat anything at anytime, and while you sleep the city keeps on going, churning out the American dream.
