Talking Travel

Continuing in this week’s supplement, Frank Barrett is back with his most recent column, written exclusively for Mail Travel. Head over to the website to read the full article and keep your eyes peeled for regular updates from him at www.mailtravel.co.uk

Of all the places in the world, by the time that I first visited New York - at the age of 25 - it was the city that I was most desperate to see. It was somewhere that practically summed up the excitement of foreign travel - a city celebrated in songs (‘New York, New York’!), film, literature and, of course, in shows which all probably began life on Manhattan’s Great White Way: Broadway. As my plane on that first journey circled over the city before its approach to JFK airport, there was a heart-stopping sight of the Manhattan skyline: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler building and, in those pre-9/11 days, the World Trade Center (my wife and I enjoyed the terrifying view from the World Trade Center’s openair rooftop Observation deck on almost our first trip out of our hotel). New York is one of those rare places that hugely exceeds your expectations: Central Park, for example, is much vaster than you think, the museums are more splendidly stocked, the department stores are more cavernous, the streets longer, the restaurants serve bigger portions. A day spent in New York is a like a year in any other city: you see so much, you walk so far and, at the end of the day, you sleep like a log. You could spend a week of solid sightseeing in New York and you would probably only barely scratch the tourist surface: the Statue of Liberty, the Circle Line Cruise, Harlem and Booklyn (now both ultra-fashionable places to visit), Chinatown, Little Italy, Wall Street, the Battery... And then there are places within easy striking distance of New York. No visit to New York state may be considered complete without sparing the time to head upstate to enjoy the splendid sight of the Niagara Falls which sit at the border between the US and Canada. Most people think about a visit to New England during the autumn when the ‘leaf-peepers’ turn up in their tens of thousands to enjoy the sight of the trees in their famous Fall colours. Autumn can be a surprisingly mild time on the east coast of America, I’ve been in New York in November when the temperatures were up to 25C. Boston is one of those cities that is great to visit at any time of year. It has a huge range of historical attractions - many linked to the war of independence with the British. If you’re visiting from New York, there is a good reasonably fast and very affordable train service to Boston.