From Big City Finds to Relaxing Beach Times: Welcome to Queens

While Queens may not have Manhattan's skyscrapers, the Big Apple’s largest borough has no shortage of attractions.

The Green Queens: Explore the Parks and Gardens

At 898 acres, Flushing Meadows Corona Park is one of the city’s largest green spaces—even larger than Manhattan’s famed Central Park. All that space leaves plenty of room to roam. Explore the park's numerous attractions, including the New York Hall of Science and the Queens Botanical Garden. Two World's Fairs have been held here—in 1939 and 1964—and many remnants still exist, most notably the Unisphere. This giant steel globe is an iconic symbol of Queens and has received its star turn in many movies and TV shows.

The Great Outdoors: Explore Even Further

There's another protected outdoor space in Queens that's even bigger than Flushing Meadows: the more than 9,000-acre Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. This is a haven not only for birds, but also the birders who flock here. When you’re hiking and kayaking in this refuge, you’ll feel a world away from the city even while within NYC city limits.

Art and Culture: Get to These Museums

Manhattan doesn't get to have all the great NYC museums—Queens has a few worth checking out. The Museum of the Moving Image features fascinating exhibits that showcase the entire history of all forms of moving images, from early stop-motion photography to modern viral videos.

MoMA PS1 is a branch of the Museum of Modern Art housed in a historic public school building that now contains the most contemporary art in the museum's vast collection. It also hosts a large outdoor dance party on summer Saturdays.

Jazz great Louis Armstrong's Queens home has been turned into the Louis Armstrong House Museum, which fans of the late musician won't want to miss. To get a real feel for what Queens was like in its earliest rural days, check out the Queens County Farm Museum.

Hang Ten: Visit the Beach

Yes, you can go to the beach in Queens. This may surprise you, but the borough stretches all the way around Brooklyn to the Atlantic Ocean where there's a long finger of land known as the Rockaway Peninsula—home to Rockaway Beach. Rockaway has a lot more beach than its more famous neighbor to the west, Brooklyn’s Coney Island. It’s also home to the only legal surfing beach in New York City. The most pristine stretch of sand is at Jacob Riis Park, part of the Gateway National Recreation Area and home to the Riis Park Beach Bazaar.

This boardwalk spot comes alive during the warmer months with live music and lots of food vendors. Rockaway is reachable by subway train on the A line, but to get to Riis Park you'll need to take a bus or a cab. On summer weekends, you can take the New York Beach Ferry from Pier 11 in lower Manhattan to the Beach Bazaar, a pricier (yet more scenic) option.

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