You go to Manhattan knowing that there is no beach and there is no golf and that a vacation there is going to be as fast-paced as a strong cup of espresso.
How can you possibly, in one week, see and attend the museums, the galleries, the Broadway shows, Carnegie Hall, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, SoHo, TriBeCa, Greenwich Village, Bloomingdale's, the jazz clubs and watch the sunset over New Jersey skies from the bar at the top of the World Trade Center?How can you find time to sample enough of Manhattan's restaurants, or make the scene at the 21 Club, Elaine's, the Knitting Factory or the Apollo Theater? Or stroll through Central Park, drop in at the New York Stock Exchange, rent a hansom cab, visit the memorial to John Lennon at Strawberry Fields, or try to find haunts featured on "Seinfeld" or "Friends?"
The solution is to see only some of these big-time tourist draws. Manhattan is full of small delights, block after block of them.
Obscure museums: the Museum of the Piano, for example. Specialty stores: Man-Tiques Ltd. on Second Avenue, offering antiques of interest to men. The experience of eating at restaurants where real New Yorkers eat: La Mela restaurant on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, for example, a small hole-in-the-wall where there is no menu and the owner, who may yell insults at customers, has a risque surprise for the broad-minded.
Make your own quiet moments even in the dirt and din of Manhattan, where you will hear more auto horns per hour than you will in a whole year in Phoenix.
Order a beverage at the venerable Algonquin Hotel, which has its own cats in the lobby.
Have lunch at the Museum of Modern Art on a veranda overlooking a fountain and small plaza: To get there you have to walk past Monet's vast, mesmerizing, peaceful work "Waterlilies."
Walk over the wet leaves in Central Park at dawn when fit New York professionals jog. Enchant your senses by buying a fresh bouquet from the legions of street-corner florists.
Look for tree-shaded streets and a seat at the Restaurant Tartine, a tiny bistro in an 18th-century building on West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, where famed authors wearing tweeds and carrying umbrellas prowl the cobblestones. Wonder why all the young people feel they have to dress in black like beatniks.
After a show, head for Barrymore's, 267 W. 45th St., near the New York Times building. Cast members carouse at this place with terpsichorean waiters, and you might get invited to sit with them at their table.
If you are a well-heeled member of the Arizona Club, use your reciprocal privileges to book a spartan room at the New York Athletic Club (it has a rigorous dress code operative 24 hours a day so take a suit and tie and, if you want to dress down, use the rear service elevator). Make use of the club's astonishing array of in-the-building sports and workout activities.
A fan of Mad magazine, which has just put out its 350th issue? Its small staff welcomes visitors to its offices, where Managing Editor Annie Gaines, widow of founder Bill Gaines, has been known to take perfect strangers on a personal tour. Her Upper East Side apartment contains one of the planet's best-known collections of Statue of Liberty replicas, plus magazine archives.
Your back and feet aching after hiking the canyons of skyscrapers? Your neck stiff because you are looking up so much? Try instant back and foot rubs, priced about $10-20, either from people advertising this service on the street, or at a small chain of walk-in salons.
Look for the unexpected in the vicinity of Rockefeller Center, whose 18 buildings are the world's largest privately owned business and entertainment complex. Get up before dawn and get on national TV by standing outside the "Today Show" studios. Attend a free Sunday outdoor calypso, reggae or jazz concert there. Look for the Louis Vuitton antique-auto exhibit or an outdoor used-book fair in the surrounding streets.
You still miss the West?
Try the nouveau Southwest cuisine at the Arizona 206 Club near Bloomingdale's at E. 60th St. Or the Rosa Mexicano restaurant at 1063 First Ave. at 58th Street, or El Parador at 325 E. 34th St., the oldest Mexican establishment in town.
Want to dine at someplace they'd never allow in the Valley? Try Lucky Cheng's at 24 First Ave., which offers, according to its ads, "Pan-Asian cuisine graciously served by beautiful `waitresses' in drag."
If this is your first trip, scale back your must-do list.
Manhattan will still be there after you leave.
You can come back again, knowing next time that New Yorkers are not all hard-edged and rude, that for every dishonest taxi driver there is one whose charm you won't soon forget, that you can walk back to your hotel after a show in perfect safety and that the graffiti-smeared subway system is not so intimidating after all.
Take in one show, maybe two.
A sure bet is "Les Miserables," with two Valley women in starring roles - Tregoney Shephard of Mesa as the evil Madame Thenardier and Christeena Michelle Riggs of Chandler as the angelic Eponine. After a performance, stand by the cast entrance and ask these women for an autograph: It's a thrill for them.
Before you go, pick up a copy of The New York Times at a local bookstore or supermarket, scan the theater listings and call the appropriate ticket agency. Forget the hit "Rent," unless you want to pay a scalper $200 to $300 for a bad seat.
Continue buying the Times in Manhattan, cost 60 cents, and purchase a copy of New York magazine, $2.95, to keep abreast of entertainment big and small while you are there. Scan the weekly, highbrow New York Observer, a newspaper printed on salmon paper, for the latest on high society and the prices of upscale Manhattan condo prices, $1.5 million and up.
Take that horse and carriage ride in Central Park, $34 plus tip for 20 minutes. Ride the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty, round-trip fare 50 cents payable at the Staten Island terminus. Use the subway, $1.50 a ride anywhere in Manhattan and even out to Queens or the Bronx, and be sure to ask for the free subway map at the ticket booths.
See at least two museums, or at least a wing or two of them. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is so huge you couldn't see it all in one week even if you went every day. The Museum of Modern Art is more manageable. The relatively obscure Frick Gallery, housing art accumulated by an industrialist progenitor of Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, is worth a visit if only to gaze at its serene pond.
New York is a big-hearted city, proud of what it has to offer. Legions of Italian, German, Japanese and Taiwanese tourists walk the streets in search of fabled sights. But it also can be curiously venal.
Keep your wits. Every now and then someone will try to nickel and dime you. At a perfectly good espresso joint near Seventh Avenue and Central Park South, for example, the staff routinely try to keep the change for themselves, even on takeouts.
Use your instincts to enter and exit the city from its two airports, La Guardia and JFK. The battle of wits to ensure that you are not extorted is good mental training for a week in Manhattan.
The taxi service at the airports is mostly reformed, however, with a uniformed agent guiding passengers to the waiting line of cabs at the terminals. He politely informs them that the fare is fixed to Manhattan ($30 from JFK including $3 for tolls payable in advance, plus tip, and $20 from La Guardia). Some drivers may not offer you the correct change, however. This also happens on cab rides in the city.
"New York City is one big movie," said Jorge Brucelli, an Ecuadorian-born cabbie who likes to talk philosophy like only Manhattan cabbies can.
"There are no directors and producers. You are directing your own movie. You are the actors. Everything you see here is unique. You see it that one time and you never see it again. All day long in Manhattan, that is the way it is."
GETTING THERE: Look for airfare promotion bargains. Regular round-trip fares from Phoenix can exceed $500, but special fares offered by individual airlines this year have been $300 or lower. Most major carriers using Sky Harbor fly either direct to New York City or make connections.
ACCOMMODATIONS: Hotel rooms in Manhattan range from $75 up through $1,000 or more per night. The Sunday New York Times travel section has a listing of less-expensive offerings. Rooms around the Times Square area at chain hotels range from $250 to $450.
TIPS: Be prepared for cooler and rainy weather. Take an umbrella and a good pair of walking shoes. Many restaurants and clubs insist on formal attire: For women, take a good black dress or business suit; for men, take a suit or blazer and slacks and a tie or two. A leather jacket, or a raincoat, would be useful street gear for the fall and early winter.
INFORMATION: New York Convention and Visitors Bureau: 1-212-397-8222; arts and festival information: 1-212-765-ARTS.