There is an apocryphal story that in 1626 Pieter Minuit, on behalf of the Netherlands, purchased Manhattan from the local Native Americans for 60 guilders worth of goods, equivalent to $24. This would have been the first of many a shrewd business deal to have taken place on this compact piece of real estate. Then it was just a rocky island covered in trees, but it proved to be an excellent foundation for the skyscrapers that have defined the city over the course of the last century. Our shrewd deal was to book a mooring at the 79th Street Boat Basin at a cost of just $30 per night. It was only a 10 minute dinghy ride followed by 10 minutes' walk to Central Park. New York must be one of the most pedestrian friendly cities in America. You might be inclined to take the subway occasionally to get about town quickly, but that is not nearly such an enjoyable experience.

Viewed from one of the high buildings surrounding the Park, all you can see is a canopy of trees. There are no wide open vistas, only woodland with a maze of winding pathways with surprising points of interest at every turn. It might be a natural stone bluff, a set of grand masonry steps with ornate balustrading, an extravagantly made fountain, an artificial lake complete with rowing boats for hire or another for radio-controlled yachts. A bronze statue of characters from Alice in Wonderland has suddenly become popular again since the recent movie. Another of Hans Christian Anderson stands lonely, awaiting his turn for revival. On a sweltering hot Independence Day, New Yorkers and tourists filled the Park: talking, walking, jogging, picnicking, sunbathing and boating.

On the far corner of the Park is the Guggenheim Museum of Art, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, with its galleries set on a continuous spiral ramp like an inside-out helter-skelter. It possesses permanent exhibits by reputed modern artists of the likes of Kandinsky and Jackson Pollock. Among the temporary exhibitions whilst we were there was a collection by Rineke Dijkstra of themed life-size portraits of young people, and also some mesmerising videos. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in contrast, is built in the grand traditional style along the lines of the British Museum in London. It has a generous share of the world's supply of antiquities as well as works by later masters such as Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, Gaugin and Faberge. Particularly relevant is the American wing, and we decided that a large Tiffany mosaic entitled "Dream Garden" would be just the job set against the wall outside our dining room window at home.

Proceeding down 5th Avenue, we called in at the Tiffany store, but they were out of Dream Gardens. Too bad! We continued past the Chrysler, Rockefeller and Empire State Buildings, then turned off to have a look round Macey's. This is claimed to be the largest department store in the world, but it is looking extremely dilapidated and sells little other than clothing. No wonder American tourists flock to Harrods when they get to London. We returned up Broadway, the one major highway that disobeys, and presumably pre-empted, the rectangular grid layout of roads. Garish Times Square was packed with tourists, but soon we were back in a quiet and leafy residential district lined with elegant brown-stone houses. In this locality there was a choice of food shops selling good quality produce at reasonable prices just a short walk from where our dinghy was tied up: the most convenient food shopping we had experienced yet in America.

The South Street Seaport Museum has a few ships in the throes of a rather forlorn effort at restoration. The clipper "Peking" was not open to the public, but we were able to view the "Ambrose" light-ship, whose crew had lived in fear of being run down by ships homing in on them in the fog. Rather more fascinating was the museum building with its recently revitalised and sometimes quirky exhibits about life in New York. These include images of Manhattan Island before the arrival of Europeans, a multi-media presentation of the history of the city, scenes from the lives of dockland workers, examples of American folk art and displays from some current creative industries in New York. We walked back to the subway station via a remarkably old-fashioned maritime book store to buy some charts for the next leg of our passage northwards.