However, after wandering around Manhattan island, one of the five boroughs which comprise New York City and the one in which I was staying, I soon realised that it is a vibrant, exciting city and one which is fun and easy to explore. Navigation is made particularly simple thanks to a grid system of named and numbered avenues running north-south, which are cut across by numbered streets running east-west. The island is also divided into districts, from the more obviously named Upper West and Upper East Sides to the more cryptic SoHo (South of Houston Street) and NoLIta (North of Little Italy).
New York is renowned for its shops, malls and department stores. You are supposed to be able to find everything and anything there and, more often than not, goods are cheaper than in Europe. So I decided to put the theory to the test. I was on a shopping trip with a girlfriend and we quickly sussed out which neighbourhoods we should tread in order to unearth the goodies and bargains that would render our friends back home green with envy.
Because of its proximity to our hotel, we headed first to Fifth Avenue where we found chain stores such as Banana Republic, Club Monaco, J. Crew, and Gap (which, although it exists in London, I had to visit because the prices are the same in dollars as they are in pounds back home) as well as the major department stores, including Saks and Henri Bendel. Needless to say, I started flexing my credit card straight away!
In SoHo, we came across trendy shops such as Anthropologie, Diesel, Quicksilver and Make-up Forever, as well as designer stores. There were also a number of art galleries and hundreds of streets stalls selling all sorts of paraphernalia from pictures of fruit and photographs of New York to soda siphons and baby clothes.
For up-and-coming designers, couturiers' boutiques and quirky one-off shops, aim for NoLIta, an area which is becoming very fashionable and which is filling up with trendy cafés and restaurants. Our last port of call was Lower Manhattan, where we bought up far too many bargains in the discount and clearance stores around Church Street and Fulton Street.
With all this walking and shopping, we built up quite an appetite but never had any trouble satisfying it! It seems that wherever you are in Manhattan, you are not far from somewhere to eat. And the variety of eateries was astonishing: within each district, it is easy to find everything from the traditional hot dog and pretzel street stand to French bistros and Japanese restaurants. With recommendations from some American friends, we ate out in some great restaurants including the soulful Shark Bar on the Upper West Side, the eclectic Felix in SoHo, the popular Il Bagatto and the mega-trendy Bowery Bar, both in the East Village.
Manhattan is very conducive to walking and during our five-day stay, my friend and I covered a lot of ground. Although shopping took precedence over sightseeing, we did see plenty of famous monuments including the massive twin towers of the World Trade Centre (hard to miss really, seeing that they dominate the New York skyline), Times Square, the Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building.
Although there is never enough time to shop (I'm sure my bank manager would disagree), five days in New York was the perfect stay - enough time to do and see lots but not too much that we haven't left behind plenty of shops and sights for our next visit.
Margaret Cameron visited New York in May 2001
