For once, I credit Posh and Becks with discerning taste. If their first-born had to be named after a borough of New York, they couldn't have chosen better than Brooklyn. (Manhattan or Staten Island are crazy names to land a kid with, Queens is spicy but... and Bronx sounds like one of those mutton-headed linebackers shoulder-barging opponents off the American football field. No obvious connection there.)
If it were still a city in its own right, Brooklyn would be the fourth biggest in the United States. Settled independently from New Amsterdam in the 1640s by the Dutch and named Breuckelen, the port steadily swallowed up other settlements on the rump of Long Island until it was incorporated into New York City in 1898.
It's a stone's throw across the East River from the southern tip of Manhattan, an easy walk by bridge, yet the vast majority of visitors to New York never get there. I'd been to the city twice before and never stepped foot off Manhattan. When friends moved to Brooklyn I had a new reason to try. Armed with the Time Out Book of New York Walks, I had a template to work from.
Since we were staying in Brooklyn, my wife and I started our exploration in its heart, the residential neighbourhood of Carroll Gardens. This is brownstone land, neat avenues of three- or four-storey homes with 'stoops', short flights of steps up to imposing front doors. Unusually for New York, it's an area that seems designed for living in; there are even front gardens and children. Italians made this district their own, evident in the number of bakeries selling cakes and pastries, and corner delis where old men congregate to chew the fat. Statues of the Madonna and saints populate garden shrines - I'm no canonic scholar, but I'd guess St Francis was among them given the attendant fawns and odd flamingo.
Brooklyn has seen waves of immigration, from the Mediterranean and eastern Europe, Spain and its colonies and the Middle East. The latest wave is of American urban professionals forced to look beyond Manhattan for affordable homes. And, like previous arrivals, they bring their culture with them.
Smith Street is symbolic of the new order, full of cafés, bars and boutiques. I particularly liked a shop called Crush, with a sign declaring, 'Hip stuff you'll want'. Most important of all, and most likely to lure people across the East River at night, new restaurants open all the time. (We went back for an evening meal at a buzzy place called Banania.)
Carroll Gardens blends into Cobble Hill, closer to the old industrial waterfront. Its greatest secret is Warren Place, an enchanting row of what look like almshouses, with brickwork arches above the doors, separated by a neat strip of garden. They were built in the 1870s to provide decent cottages for working men. Together with the Home Buildings, on to which the row backs, with their open stairs, iron railings and communal yard, you could have walked into a corner of London's East End reshaped at the same time by philanthropists across the sea.
If you've managed so far not to succumb to the cake shops, Atlantic Avenue will sorely tempt you. Signs in Arabic and English reveal its growing Middle Eastern community, and Sahadi is the fabulous grocery that keeps it in spices and feeds it a mouthwatering mix of snacks. If they leave you thirsty, try a pint of locally brewed Brooklyn Lager at Pete's Waterfront Ale House.
Brooklyn Heights is the exclusive end of town. Many streets still have wooden clapboard houses that speak of colonial times, and boast connections to authors such as W.H. Auden, Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. But the jewel in the crown is Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a bench-lined footpath covering a busy expressway that offers unrivalled views across the East River to Manhattan's skyscrapers.
And the view is going to get even better. A new Guggenheim museum is planned for the piers that the promenade overlooks, designed by Frank Gehry, architect of the museum's mind-boggling Bilbao outpost. This will surely be the best spot from which to admire his next fantastic creation. You can get closer still down below at the old Fulton Ferry District pier. The abandoned warehouses round here are being snapped up by loft developers anxious to cash in on the view. They've even given the place a sassy name - Dumbo (Down Underneath the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Not as sharp as SoHo, TriBeCa or Nolita, but somehow apt, because I believe I could afford to live here only when I see an elephant fly. If a slice of the view is beyond your means too, console yourself with a slice of pizza from Grimaldi's on Front Street, reputedly the best in New York.
Here you face a choice: return to Manhattan or explore deeper into Brooklyn's hinterland. The Coney Island funfair and Russian enclave of Brighton Beach lie at the end of the F train subway line. Closer by is Prospect Park, landscaped by the same people who laid out Central Park, and in their own view the superior creation. On its perimeter stands Brooklyn Museum of Art, a gallery that asserted its independent spirit in 1999 when it exhibited the elephant-dung pictures of Chris Ofili. Nearer to downtown Brooklyn is the emerging suburb of Fort Greene, focus of African-American life and home to the film maker Spike Lee. It has its own scene and fans of hip-hop will tune into its bars.
Eventually, though, for most visitors the time comes to head back to Manhattan. You can do this by subway, but infinitely better is to do the last stretch, across the Brooklyn Bridge, on foot. It's a landmark in its own right, the world's first steel suspension bridge, opened in 1883. Slightly awkward to reach from Brooklyn's riverside, but persevere and you'll soon be on the boardwalk that carries you and commuting cyclists up above the traffic.
Now you have a real opportunity for larking about. Hum the theme tune from Saturday Night Fever as you strut your way across the river like John Travolta. Every step takes you closer to the skyscrapers - the Municipal Building to the right, the Gothic Woolworth Building to the left and beyond the twin towers of the World Trade Center. You're back in Manhattan, which is about the most exciting place possible to arrive.
But real, laid-back Brooklyn will tempt you back again.
Fact file
Most visitors to Brooklyn come on a day-trip via the subway while staying on Manhattan, but there are options for accommodation in the borough itself:
City Lights Bed and Breakfast This agency lists hundreds of rooms and apartments to stay in across New York. Tel: 00 1 212 737 7049; fax 212 535 2755
YMCA The Greenpoint Y has 100 rooms priced from $40 (£28) a day, and rooms with TV and air-con. There's even a swimming pool and sauna. Tel: 00 1 718 389 3700
New York Marriott Brooklyn Touted as 'the only full-service hotel in Brooklyn' the chain's venture into the area has proved a shrewd move. Tel: 001 718 246 7000
