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New York
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 New York at night |
New York City is in the northeast coast of America. With 8 million people, it has the highest population of any city in the United States. The city is a centre for international commerce, communications, music, fashion and culture. New York was settled by Europeans from The Netherlands in 1624 and they named the city New Amsterdam after the capital city of the Netherlands. When the English took over the colony in 1664 they changed the name to New York, to honor the Duke of York, who later became King Charles II of England. The Dutch surrendered without fighting. |
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They traded the town to England for the colony of Surinam in South America, which they thought was worth more money. New York quickly grew to become a large and important port city. In 1898, the cities of New York and Brooklyn merged with the Bronx, Staten Island and the towns in Queens County to form Greater New York. This is the total area of the city today. Water divides a lot of the city. The Hudson River forms the border between Manhattan and the Bronx. The East River is the border between Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens. Some people say that New York seems more an international city than an American one, that is because of the large quantity of immigrants, 36% of the total inhabitants are foreign-born. The immigrants tend to live together forming their own neighborhood, there are neighborhoods for the Irish, Chinese, Jewish, Portorican, corean... There is a stereotype of the New-Yorker saying that they feel superior and have very little time to dedicate to other people. This may be true in some cases. The Big Apple, as it is popularly called, offers lots of things to its visitors, more than 18,000 restaurants, 150 museums, and 10,000 shops of every variety. Every week, thousands of tourists go to New York to see attractions such as the Statue of Liberty, Madison Square Garden, Times Square, 5th Avenue...The city is especially well known for the high buildings in Manhattan. The Empire State Building is now the highest after the destruction of the two towers in the World Trade Center in September 2001. In its place they are now building a new tower which will be called the Freedom Tower. However, New York is not only a concrete jungle. Central Park, in Manhattan, stretches out for miles, offering running and biking trails as well as several ponds. Have a nice trip! |
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