elegant-museum-classic
Museum Mile runs up its spine — the Met, the Frick, the Guggenheim, and the most elegant residential blocks in the city.
The Upper East Side is the old-money counterpart to the UWS. It runs from 59th Street to 96th, from Central Park east to the East River. Fifth Avenue along Central Park is lined with the Gilded Age mansions of the Vanderbilts, Fricks, and Astors — many of them now museums. This section of Fifth Avenue is "Museum Mile": the Met, the Guggenheim (Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral), the Cooper Hewitt, the Jewish Museum, the Frick, the Neue Galerie, El Museo del Barrio. You can walk a straight line and hit a world-class museum every few blocks.
**Walk:** Start at 5th and 72nd and walk north along Fifth Avenue. You'll pass the Frick Collection, the Met, the Guggenheim, the Neue Galerie, the Cooper Hewitt. Cut east to Madison Avenue on any cross street for luxury shopping. End at Gracie Mansion on East End at 88th — the official residence of the Mayor of New York.
**What makes it special:** The density of great museums is unmatched anywhere in the world. You could spend a week here and not see it all.
**Eat & drink:** JG Melon (classic burger), Cafe Sabarsky (Viennese, inside the Neue Galerie — the best apple strudel in NYC), Lady M Cake Boutique, E.A.T. (Eli Zabar's, pricy but legendary bread).