Where is New York? It’s in New York, of course! This might seem a
little strange, but let me explain. New York City
is in the state of New York, although the
state capital is Albany.
Its nickname is
“The Big Apple” (la Gran Manzana) and the people who live there like it so much that they started
a fashion: The heart of the city is Manhattan. The Dutch
bought the island from the Indians at the start of the 17th century
and a city called New Amsterdam was built
there. In the 1660s, the English captured it and named it New York in honour of (en honor de) the Duke of York.
The Statue of Liberty
Did you know that the Statue of Liberty,
on Liberty Island in New York
Harbor, was a present (regalo)
from the French to mark 100 years of American independence? In fact, there is a
replica on an island in the River Seine in Paris. The Statue of Liberty was the first
thing that millions of immigrants from Europe saw when they arrived in America. She
carries a torch (antorcha) in
one hand to light the way (iluminar el camino)
and a book in the other to represent the American Constitution.
The
City today
Today New
York is divided into 5 boroughs (distritos)– Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. It’s the biggest city in the United States
with a population of over 7 million and it’s a major business and cultural
centre. As you might imagine, a city this size
needs a sophisticated transport system. New
York has a subway (the American word for
underground), its famous yellow taxis and lots of bridges and tunnels.
The
streets in Manhattan
are very easy to follow; there are 11 avenues that run north-south (ir de norte a sur)
and they are crossed by streets. The avenues and streets don’t usually have
names but are numbered. That's why the U2 song calls it the place where "the streets have no name".
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