The Hermitage is bringing Russia to Amsterdam Marcus Koppen

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THINK you’ve already done New York, and the rest? Think again. This year, the usual city-break suspects are busy reinventing themselves:

New York: High Line

A park as high as a skyscraper

Your typical images of New York City – honking taxis on clogged arteries of avenues and hordes of people gawping at Times Square – are, unfortunately, completely true.

This makes the sweltering summers problematic. Central Park and the few other green spaces just aren’t enough.

The crowded-in denizens of the city have found a new playground literally above all this: on the High Line.

More than 30 feet in the air, the High Line – which opened two weeks ago – is a park with a past. A defunct 1930s elevated railway line which closed in 1980, the hunk of junk eyesore has been turned into a ribbon of green.

You can now walk from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District up to Chelsea’s West 20th Street without near misses with cabs or waits at pedestrian crossings. The High Line literally rises above it.

The main (and, until next month, the only) entrance is at Gansevoort.

The exits along the 15-minute route, meanwhile, are perfectly positioned to check out (or into) the new Standard Hotel, hit the designer shops on West 14th Street, or take in some culture in the Chelsea gallery district. No wonder the High Line is already a smash hit with both locals and visitors.

It’s stylish, too. But try not to be distracted by the water features, sliding chaise longues, incorporated railroad tracks and lush greenery up there; because there’s also a ridiculous number of New York sights to be viewed.

To your left is the Hudson River, New Jersey, and buildings designed by the likes of Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel. To your right is the Empire State Building, the boutiques of the Meatpacking District, and picture-perfect vistas straight down the streets from river to river.

Even better, it’s free to go up there, and is open 7am until 10pm, making it a prime spot for watching the sun set with a bottle of wine and some cheese from a Greenwich Village grocer. It’s the best thing to happen to New York City since $1 single-slice pizza.

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Get there: BA flies from £306, ba.com

Minted: Standard Andre Balazs’ hot new property in MePa is right on the High Line. Doubles from £137, www.standardhotels.com

Skinted: Chelsea Pines Inn Gorgeously kitsch abode in ­Chelsea. ­Doubles from £97, www.chelseapinesinn.com

More info: www.thehighline.org

Athens: Acropolis Museum

Room with the best view in town

The new Acropolis Museum may have been a long time coming – the idea was first mooted more than 30 years ago – but when it opened on 20 June 2009 it was welcomed with a veritable trumpet blast of national excitement.

This, you understand, is no ordinary museum. The whole point of the £100 million project is to prove to the world – and Britain in particular – that Athens has a museum good enough to house the Elgin Marbles (the sections of marble frieze from the Parthenon currently housed in the British Museum).

The museum is an impressive structure – raised on pillars above excavated remains of old Athens – and the gallery designed to house the marbles is stunning.

Glass walled on all four sides, it recreates the famous frieze in something like its entirety, with plaster casts taking the place of the missing sections.

But it’s the view that really dazzles: up to the southern face of the Acropolis itself, which must surely be the single most important historical monument in Europe.

The BM will never be able to match that.

Of course, the main attractions are just plaster casts of what’s here in London, but if you haven’t been to Athens since its transformation for the 2004 Olympics, now’s the perfect time for a visit.

The historic core has been transformed with pedestrianised streets, al fresco restaurants and a super-charged atmosphere created by the view. History has never been so cool – even in a city as hot as this one.

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Get there: Aegean Airlines flies from £170, www.aegeanair.gr

Minted: Hilton Top-end modernist accommodation. Doubles from £148, www.hiltonathens.gr

Skinted: Acropolis House Beneath the Acropolis itself. Doubles from £67, www.acropolishouse.gr

More info: www.theacropolismuseum.gr

Amsterdam: The Hermitage

Lose yourself in a fug . . . of art on the water

It must be infuriating to be an Amsterdammer. There you are with your nice city (so splendiferous that Peter the Great used it as inspiration for St Petersburg), your eco cycling habit (proper old-style bikes too, not the hard-lined boring ones we have in London) and your art (the Van Gogh Museum just took down an exhibition from MoMA, no less). Yet all anyone can talk about are your more dubious attractions.

If the stoners could see beyond their THC-laced fug, though, they might notice that, this summer, Amsterdam’s going all out for culture.

Not only has the Royal Palace reopened after a major refurb, and the Stedelijk Museum taken its show on the road while it’s being tarted up for the end of the year, but, on Saturday, the artistic behemoth that is the St Petersburg Hermitage Museum opened its first branch outside Russia in the 17th-century Amstelhof building. It’s a miraculous transformation for a place which, until 2004, housed a slightly shabby old people’s home (check the “before” photos on the walls for proof).

Now, instead of uggers trailing pipework and hospital­issue white tiles, we have two glorious display wings. There’s so much natural light flooding in that even the most philistine of visitors will struggle to nod off. And the old chapel has been turned into a glorious rest area – no art, just seats overlooking the river through vast windows.

Best of all, it’s not crammed full of stuff – the corridors linking the two wings are bare (apart from the pictures of the place as it was), and the exhibition space less labyrinthine, more manageable.

The opening exhibition – At the Russian Court, a collection of plush costumes and collectables from the Romanov dynasty – might be a little niche for some tastes, but the building itself makes the £12 ticket price worth it.

Moreover, the forthcoming exhibitions should be way more accessible – Matisse and Picasso from March 2010, and Alexander the Great next autumn.

It’s a spectacular addition to the Amsterdam art scene. Justhope the usual suspects stagger out of the red-light district long enough to appreciate it. That really would be enough to make Peter the Great proud.

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Get there BMI flies from £116,www.flybmi.com

WHERE TO STAY: Minted: The Dylan Sexy brother to the Dublin original. Doubles from £249,www.dylanamsterdam.com

Skinted: Citizen M Brilliant budget hotels – one at the airport, one in the centre – but mind the open-plan bathrooms. Doubles from £71, www.citizenm.com

MORE INFO:www.hermitage.nl

The best of the rest

Paris: Alain Ducasse’s chef school

Sod Gordon – Alain Ducasse has long been le superchef in France and, last month, he opened a cookery school for the public. From £68 for two hours. www.atelier-gastronomique.com

Berlin: World Athletics Championships

500,000 athletes will descend on Berlin for the IAAF World Championships from 15-23 August. Much of it will take place in the Olympic Stadium, but the marathon and walking events will go through the city centre – taking in Potsdamer Platz, the Reichstag, and finishing at the Brandenburg Gate. www.berlin2009.org

LA: Universal Studios

Exactly a year since a four-acre fire knocked out a chunk of Universal Studios’ backlot, the iconic Courthouse Square set has been re-built and is featured once again on the tour for visitors. From £36.www.universalstudioshollywood.com

The International art scene

The Chicago Art Institute unveiled a pretty fly new modern wing last month, making it the USA’s second-largest art gallery. Other new openings this summer include Brussels’ Magritte Museum, the MUDE Design and Fashion Museum in Lisbon and the Beatlemania Museum in Hamburg.