New York

The city itself fills a week on its own and is covered in the New York City guide rather than restated here. What belongs to the state is what lies immediately beyond it, and Long Island is the most underrated of it: a hundred miles of land running east into the Atlantic, reachable by commuter train from Manhattan and a different world at the far end. The North Fork has become a serious wine region of small family producers, farm stands and oyster bars, with none of the Hamptons' price tag. The South Fork holds those Hamptons — expensive, beautiful, and genuinely lovely out of season — and ends at Montauk, where the lighthouse stands on the cliff at the island's tip and the surf beaches are the best in the state. Fire Island, a barrier strip with no cars at all, is reached by ferry and runs on boardwalks and bicycles. Closer in, the North Shore's Gilded Age mansions are the landscape that produced The Great Gatsby, several of them open to visitors.