They have their own shops, restaurants and churches.

For this reason, the nicknames of NY are : MELTING POT or BIG APPLE.

There are 5 parts in NY which are called boroughs:

1. Manhattan – the real centre of NY
2. Staten Island – there are a lot of lakes and trees, not many people live there
3. Brooklyn – has a famous beach – Coney Beach and a famous shipyard
4. Queens – is the largest borough and a lot of visitors arrive there if they fly because there is the most important airport (one of 3 airports in NY) – the John F.Kennedy International Airport
5. The Bronx – is the only borough on the mainland, all others are on islands; there are a lot of parks and the Bronx ZOO – one of the largest in America

NY is a city of international importance. There is the United Nations Headquartes by the East River.
There is one flag for each member of the UN (about 150). Visitors can take an interesting tour through the buildings, they can also get tickets for a meeting of the General Assembly, the Security Council and other organs.
Everyone coming to NY from the sea can see the Statue of Liberty standing on Liberty Island, in the NY City Harbour. The statue is 46 m high, 92 m high including its pedestal. It weighs 225 tons. It was a gift to the American people from the French in 1886 to commemorate the alliance between the USA and France during the American revolution. The Statue symbolises freedom and democracy and since then it has been the first sight for immigrants who have come to the USA.
Boats take visitors from Manhattan Island to the Statue of Liberty. There are stairs inside the Statue (167 steps in the base and a spiral staircase of 171 steps in the statue).
Visitors can walk up the stairs to the head of the Statue (but most of them prefer the elevator) and look out from there at the harbour.
There is also the Museum of Immigration in the base. The Statue was the first object to greet immigrants sailing to the New World and thus became a symbol of the American ideal.

MANHATTAN is the real centre of New York. It is a long island washed by two rivers: The Hudson River on the west and The East River on the other side. The Harlem River is between Manhattan and The Bronx. NY has more than 65 bridges; The Brooklyn Bridge is the longest in the world; The George Washington Bridge is the only bridge over the Hudson River.

The city was built on a modern plan of streets and avenues which follow a geometry shape and are numbered, they do not have names except the old ones – Wall Street and Broadway. Streets run east-west and avenues north-south

One of the most impressive views of NY City is the typical Manhattan skyline – a large number of skyscrapers on a small area. They started to build skyscrapers because of the lack of space and the high price of land on the island. Skyscrapers are also an interesting sociological phenomenon as the building is a small city itself: it offers residential quarters, office spaces, parking lots, restaurants, shopping facilities, fitness centres, swimming pools etc., but living in a skyscraper is very expensive.
The most famous are:
Empire State Building – it has 102 stories and a TV tower at the top.