New York

New York City is the closest thing the world has to a city that contains everything. Its five boroughs — Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island — constitute the most densely populated and culturally diverse urban area in the Western hemisphere, home to over 8 million people speaking 800 languages. The skyline, with the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center rising above the Hudson and East Rivers, remains one of the most recognisable views on earth.

The cultural offering is staggering in scale and quality. The Met, MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Brooklyn Museum, the American Museum of Natural History — New York has more world-class museums per square kilometre than anywhere. Broadway is the world's greatest concentration of live theatre. The jazz clubs of Harlem, the classical music at Carnegie Hall, and the emerging arts scenes in Brooklyn and Queens mean there is always something extraordinary happening.

The food scene is both overwhelming and endlessly rewarding. NYC's immigrant communities have made it arguably the most diverse culinary city in the world: authentic dim sum in Flushing, exceptional Dominican food in Washington Heights, elite Italian in the West Village, legendary delis in the Lower East Side, and world-class Japanese in Midtown. Budget dining is excellent; you can eat incredibly well for under $20 across all cuisines. Street food — dollar pizza slices, hot dogs, halal carts — is a New York institution.