New York City Exploring

Best Tour: The mayor and the city council still have their offices in graceful old City Hall (Broadway, at Murray St.; tel. 212/788-2170). This under-publicized free tour allows you to catch glimpses of NYC politico celebs, while admiring gorgeous portraiture and architecture.

Best Art Museum: The P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (22-25 Jackson Ave.; tel. 718/784-2084) puts on great art shows just a stop away from Manhattan in Long Island City. The museum is a beautiful conversion of a Renaissance Revival public school, and the interior spaces have been inventively redone to complement the cutting-edge art displayed here. Entrance is by suggested donation.

Best Dirt Cheap Date Night: First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (200 Eastern Pkwy.; tel. 718/638-5000) are among the best parties of the year. You can generate conversation fodder at exhibits, films, and lectures. You'll also find live music, should all that talk lead to a little dancing.

Best Natural Oasis: Visions of rhododendron valleys, waterfalls, and wetlands conjure up only one place in New York: the Bronx. If you've never seen the New York Botanical Garden (200th St. and Southern Blvd.; tel. 718/817-8700), you'll be amazed at the biological diversity here. It's arguably the country's greatest public garden.

Best Elephant Procession: Forget Republican conventions -- New York's best elephant show occurs when the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus (tel. 212/465-6741) comes to town. Once a year around midnight, the elephants (sometimes accompanied by zebras and camels) stroll through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and across town to Madison Square Garden. As far as New York wildlife goes, this spectacle is hard to beat.