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“I HAVE faith,” says our server, Charles, at New York’s Black Barn restaurant, on the night of the US election. Distinguished and earnest, with a mottled moustache, he tells us over ribs and shoestring fries how the Madison Square restaurant recently hosted Hillary Clinton and her campaign team.
He’d managed to ask her husband Bill – while refilling his Diet Coke – what he should say to friends and family thinking of voting for Donald Trump in the upcoming election. Clinton told him: “There is nowhere in the world you could put my wife, that, after a week of her being there, wouldn’t be a better place.” Charles’ faith, echoed by almost every New Yorker I meet on November 8, feels distressingly on a par with saying the words, “I believe in magic", when waking up the next day to the unceasing flow of the elephant grey Hudson River and the news that Trump is America’s president-elect. Hours earlier, at an election party strung with increasingly limp balloons in red, white and blue, the only moment of distraction from the results rolling in is discussing what Hogwarts house we’d live in. “It’s not all about Gryffindor!”
YORK SKYLINE. INSET, EDDIE REDMAYNE IN FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
FINDING FANTASTIC SIDE OF NEW YORK During a tumultuous, topsy-turvy time for New York City, ELLA WALKER explores the US city with J.K. Rowling’s latest wizarding hero, Newt Scamander, and his Fantastic Beasts, as her magical guide
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TIME: A ROOM IN THE TENEMENT MUSEUM CAPTURES LIFE IN THE 20S
shouts our host, indignant. “I’m a Hufflepuff – and more people are Hufflepuff than you think!” Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, the latest story to tumble from the imagination of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, is set to be the ultimate moment for Hufflepuffs, traditionally the least revered of Hogwarts’ four houses. The film follows English magizoologist and former Hufflepuff Newt Scamander (played by Eddie Redmayne), author of one of Harry Potter’s text books, who arrives at Ellis Island in 1926 with a magical, Mary Poppinslike trunk, filled with fantastical creatures, some of whom manage to claw their way out of the case. On screen, the movie ripples with iconic New York landmarks – from Central Park Zoo where Scamander cavorts lustily with an enchanted rhino, to the intricately corniced Woolworth building, whose golden doors reveal the headquarters of the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA, the American equivalent to the Ministry of Magic). In reality, Fantastic Beasts wasn’t actually filmed on location. However, director David Yates and scriptwriter Rowling did explore New York for inspiration, hence why I’m here. Stationed at the Conrad New York in downtown Manhattan, we’re seconds from the 9/11 Memorial and minutes from Battery Park, where you can catch a boat to Ellis
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It’s termed the holiday season, but spending Christmas in the UK isn’t everyone’s idea of a restful break. Fortunately, options for December sun are extending, with seasonal European resorts staying open year-round. Greece in particular leads the way, with a drive to boost off-peak tourism. Last winter, 100 hotels on popular island Santorini stayed open. Based on the demand for beds, more properties are following suit this year. “Everybody needs to know that Greece is not just for three months,” says Elena Kountoura, Alternate Minister of Tourism. “Greece has wonderful
›› GRAND: THE INTERIOR OF THE
FOWLER AND WELLS RESTAURANT
Island – the former gateway for millions of immigrants looking for a new life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s now an area in the grip of regeneration, showing that, while the city hasn’t waved a magic wand and miraculously reversed the tragedy wreaked in the 2001 terror attacks, 15 years on from September 11, beauty can be conjured out of rubble. Where the twin towers once stood are now huge, cascading infinity pools, pulling water eternally down into the earth in glittering sheets, the sound of it thundering through your body as you reflect over the names of the dead. But it’s not morbid, no more so than the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. In a tangled
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neighbourhood of streets that burst with Chinese supermarkets, where walls are scrawled with street art and blocks are overgrown with metal fire escapes, the museum is a relic from the early 1900s, proving that 1920s New York was not glitz, jazz and flapper dresses for everyone, a fact Fantastic Beasts doesn’t shy from. Our enigmatic tour guide, Jon Pace, tells us how director Yates scouted out the museum – which in 1988
Discover a trio of historic, enthralling American cities, and one of the world’s greatest natural wonders.
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Stay close to Niagara Falls and travel south from Canada to Gettysburg Spend a day in all-powerful Washington DC Discover Philadelphia, historic ‘Freedom City’ and New York Journey through beautiful, forested, up-state New York Fully escorted by a friendly, experienced tour manager Six nights’ room-only hotel accommodation, return flights and transfers
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be sent home again as immigration laws became increasingly stringent throughout the 20s. On our final night, we sip bitter orange cocktails at Fowler & Wells at The Beekman Hotel, a decadent, moodily lit bar that aspires to speakeasy credentials. Right now, it is difficult to extricate New York from the see-sawing political confusion and outrage – we get caught up in a protest outside Trump Towers. Hopefully, in spite of who occupies the White House, New Yorkers – whatever their background – will continue to have no trouble conjuring up faith in their city and in each other.
was discovered virtually intact, having been disused since the 1930s – as a blueprint for the apartment of No-Maj (muggle) Jacob, Newt’s accidentally acquired sidekick. The musty, cramped tenement is typical of the type that became home to thousands of German immigrants, in a neighbourhood that was locally named Kleindeutschland (’Little Germany’). Floors of hemmed-in apartments are stacked atop each other, complete with original interior windows. Fantastic Beasts unfurls with themes echoing the 1920s NY immigrant experience. Newt faces America’s border interrogators at Ellis Island, an outsider bringing with him magical ‘aliens’ and different ideas of how we can live harmoniously – ideas that flout US wizarding laws (MACUSA dislike beasts, muggles and diluting the magical gene pool.
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›› SETTING: THE NEW
FACT FILE ELLA Walker was a guest at ›› the g Conrad New York (www.conradnewyork.com) where double rooms start from $399 (£322.30) per night.
VIRGIN Atlantic ›› (www.virginatlantic.com; g 0344 8747 747) flies six times daily from
SHORT, BREEZY BOAT RIDE FROM STATUE OF LIBERTY
Today, Ellis Island – the former stately holding pen and entryway for millions fleeing poverty and persecution in their home countries – is a grand and fascinating museum just one island over, and a short and breezy boat ride from the teal beauty of the Statue of Liberty. From it, you can see the whole of the New York skyline, columns of glittering metal punching up from the watery edges of Manhattan, and you can’t help but imagine how devastating it must have been for those who got this close, only to
London Heathrow to New York, with direct flights from Manchester to JFK beginning May 2017. Return fares start from £393 per person.
TO learn more about the New ›› York g City seen in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, visit www.nycgo.com/fantasticnew-york-city
THE New York CityPASS costs ›› $114 g (£93) and provides free (and often priority) entry to
›› CAPTURING THE MAGIC: TOP, THE TENEMENT MUSEUM BUILDING. BELOW, ELLA WALKER AND THE GROUP WEARING HUFFLEPUFF SCARVES, ON THEIR TOUR OF NEW YORK
six of the city’s most iconic attractions and museums – including Ellis Island. For more information, visit www.citypass.com/new-york
TO book a tour of the ›› Tenement g Museum, visit www.tenement.org
›› IDYLLIC: SANTORINI HAS A HOST OF HOTELS OPEN.
weather. We have 365 days of sun.” Mild temperatures, ranging from 10C to 17C in December, and smaller crowds are likely to attract tourists seeking an alternative to classic mid-haul winter sun destinations such as the Canary Islands. Celebrations are also set to be more colourful than those at home. Kountoura promises Santorini has a host of festivities planned to welcome tourists. The move to prolong the holiday season is being mimicked in other islands and on the mainland, although Kountoura admits it’s a “‘slowly but surely” process. So could Greece become a year-round destination? “That’s our goal,” she says. “December, January and February are mild months. “We’re also looking to attract a different type of tourism during this period – cycling, hiking, sightseeing, spa breaks. ”We want to expand and do new things.”
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2016
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