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Nicola Doherty: I’ll take Manhattan

To celebrate the release of the final instalment of the hilarious round-the-world GIRLS ON TOUR e-series THE GIRLS TAKE MANHATTAN, author Nicola Doherty gives us the low-down on the city’s hot-spots.

I love New York. Who doesn’t? I first went there as a student, while I was working for the summer in Boston. We had no money, we stayed in the dodgy Aladdin Motel in the Theatre district, and we lived on slices of pizza. We walked all over Manhattan, staring at everything and everyone and clutching our bags lest we be mugged. It was awesome.

New York is one of those places that you can know like the back of your hand … without ever having set foot in it. On my first trip there, I may not have known how to use the subway, or visited a single museum, but somehow I knew that the Plaza Hotel was where Big had his wedding reception, that Katz’s Deli was where the old lady had what Sally was having and that the Ghostbusters building was on Central Park West. If you get excited by those things too, then I’d definitely recommend doing something like the Sex and the City Tour. They take you to all the locations, and give you a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery, and there’s a quiz. They also do film tours.

If that’s all too familiar and you’ve been to Manhattan a million times: a) I’m jealous and b) why not explore the ‘outer boroughs’, ie the rest of New York outside the island of Manhattan? Hop on the Staten Island Ferry or visit Coney Island with its retro boardwalk, amusement park, and baseball pitch where the Brooklyn Cyclones play. Brooklyn is a great place for a wander, with multiple neighborhoods from Bushwick with its artists’ studios, to the trendy Park Slope and lovely Fort Greene, a traditionally African-American area. Try the Fort Greene Flea Market or from May, the Williamsburg Flea with even more hipster beards and food trucks. Queens is also known for its fabulous and cheap restaurants — sign up here for the most up to date recommendations.

Of course, you could also follow in the footsteps of Lily, Poppy, Maggie and Rachel in my new novella, THE GIRLS TAKE MANHATTAN. I don’t want to reveal everything they get up to, but they do stay at the Mercer hotel in the Meatpacking district, have breakfast at Jack’s Wife Freda, and take a speedboat to the Statue of Liberty (NB: you need to reserve months ahead to climb up into the head).   And Poppy and Rachel visit the Guggenheim while Lily and Maggie do their own thing (it’s not mentioned in the story but I know that they go shopping in SoHo and walk on the High Line).

In fact you could do this for all the GIRLS ON TOUR  series — aside from the pop-up club in Rome, which I made up, the locations in every book are real. I LOVE the idea of someone visiting a place in Paris, Los Angeles, Meribel, Rome or New York because they read about it in GIRLS ON TOUR. If you do, please tweet or Facebook me about it. Or you could make it an armchair tour. Either way, I hope you have fun!

 

The final destination  on the GIRLS ON TOUR e-series THE GIRLS TAKE MANHATTAN is available to download now.  

Pre-order the whole series in one paperback copy out April 23rd.

 

Enjoyed this?  Why not take a look at 7 reasons why Natalie Meg Evans loves New York