New York

Opening Thursday, the Met's Spring 2012 Costume Institute exhibition, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, explores the striking affinities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, two Italian designers from different eras, who never met.

Looking for a quick bite in the Big Apple? Follow that food truck! We’re talking more than hot dogs and souvlaki here. Think Belgian waffles… Maine lobster… artisanal grilled cheese sandwiches, and much much more-perfect for grab-and-go meals enjoyed alfresco. We’ve listed a few standouts below. Be aware that food trucks rarely stay in one place, though, so follow them on Twitter to see where they’ll be next. And expect long lines during the lunch and dinner rush. The wait will be worth it!

Open since 2009, the High Line park is built on an abandoned old elevated railway, 30 feet above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side. Freight trains ran here from 1934 to 1980, but in the years after the High Line railway closed, the tracks and the black steel structure that supported them were considered an eyesore and slated for demolition.

Spring 2012 marks the 15th anniversary of CityPASS! The idea officially launched back in 1997 after Mike Morey and Mike Gallagher came up with the great idea to bundle a city's attractions and help travelers save money. Now, 15 years later the idea has expanded into 11 North American travel destinations and created over 8,000,000 happy travelers.

Money is on everybody’s mind these days — mainly, using less of it. Of course,CityPASS users are wallet-conscious travelers anyway, but we all want more ideas on how to save some while traveling.

On a recent trip to San Francisco , my husband and I wanted to check out the final days of Richard Serra’s exhibition at SFMOMA. We popped in, took a look around the atrium and caught a glimpse high above of a flickering grid of tiny lights before a kind employee politely told us the museum wasn’t open for the day. Lucky for us, the museum’s restaurant was open, and we were starving. We decided to eat an early lunch in Caffé Museo before submerging ourselves in art. After all, one must be properly fueled to fully appreciate art.

After 80 years of separation, five Diego Rivera murals have got back together at the Museum of Modern Art in a celebratory reunion that recalls the institution’s early days. With their Renaissance poise and glowing stillness, their graphic intensity that withers in reproduction but hits you at architectural scale, these huge panoramas of Mexican history and New York life have the same vividness and power that they did in 1931. The newly minted MoMA devoted its first one-man show to Matisse that year, but its second – a mid-career Rivera retrospective – was the bigger sensation. And it only materialised because of the strange three-way symbiosis among connoisseurs of modern art, a family of oil tycoons and a roving Mexican leftist. (Reposted from fttimes.com.)

My love affair with Arthur Avenue began many years ago with a carton of cold cuts. My husband, Bob, and I were newlyweds, and had just moved from the Bronx, where we were born and raised, to a suburb in Westchester County about 10 miles north. One Saturday morning, my in-laws, Nancy and Victor (officially known on their birth certificates as Annunziata and Vittorio—I’m just sayin’) arrived at our door with an enormous care package of Arthur Avenue deli meats and crusty bread, apparently intended to ward off starvation. The bulging packages of soppressata, prosciutto, capicola, and fresh mozzarella, along with still-warm-from-the-oven pane di casa loaves, were unlike anything I’d ever tasted in my non-Italian, Oscar Meyer-bologna-on-Wonder Bread childhood. I was hooked. And I’ve been making regular pilgrimages to this Italian-flavored Bronx neighborhood ever since.

Robert Burke goes by another, perhaps more familiar name: The Naked Cowboy.

Burke, as The Naked Cowboy, is, literally, one of New York City hottest tourist attractions. He may not be the most historic of Manhattan sightseeing hotspots, like Lady Liberty or the Empire State Building but this cowboy still has his share of curious fans who flock to see him strut his nearly naked stuff in the middle of Times Square nearly each and every day of the year.

Every year on December 31, one of the biggest parties of the year happens at Times Square in New York City. People all over the world fly in to attend the live event, and millions more tune in to watch on TV and count down as the famous ball drops.

Click the image to find out how the party in Times Square got started and also the changes that have happened over the years.