As a boy, the impending departure for a holiday abroad brought great excitement and sleepless nights. The adventure wasn’t just about the destination and the promise of waterslides, swimming pools and meals with grown ups, I was excited about the travel aspect too. The drama of the airport, shopping in duty free and the chance to inspect the plane’s cockpit.

It was a big event, and my parents would always ensure I was smartly dressed for the occasion. Needless to say, travel has changed.

Airports today are a mass of hysteria, impatience and pushchairs, which most will be quick to blame on terrorism, but accessibility is the real culprit.

Overnight, low fare airlines created the ‘short break’, an ecological epidemic in the making that immediately afforded middle and even low income families the ability to jet off with the same frequency as Prince Andrew, spawning tedious airport queuing and overcrowding. Some unexplained phenomena decreed that destinations beginning with the letter ‘M’ should suffer the most; Malaga, Magalouf, Mykinos.

Travelling low cost transformed holidays from a once or twice a year thing, to three or four times and created a vacancy for the boutique hotel; cheap travel meant that people could now treat themselves, by spending more money on life’s luxuries.

For most people though, getting access to that well deserved break means going through hell, which does dampen the experience. But as I discovered, it doesn’t have to be that way.

‘London’ Luton hardly conjures up an affiliation with luxury, but the promise of travel’s new line in privileged aviation is enough to wet my appetite. Goodbye to ‘Birds Eye’ meals, au revoir to tedious check in. The Silverjet terminal doesn’t smell of baby sick, it doesn’t sound like Wembley Stadium; leather replaces plastic fibre. When we arrive at the airport, our luggage is taken and we are invited to relax in the lounge whilst friendly staff organise check in and bring us our tickets. So far, it’s effortless.

Normally, the travel aspect of long haul is just a means to an end; you are herded like cattle around the airport and packed into a tube like lambs to the slaughter, before being offered a microwave meal of some description. Onboard Silverjet, the spacious cabin seats just 100, providing plenty of space to recline and watch a movie or chase some Zs. London’s Le Caprice prepare the menu and there is a choice of wines from around the world. After three glasses of champagne, lunch, 2 movies and a snooze, we arrive in Newark, refreshed and ready to take on whatever Manhattan has to throw at us.

Just as we’re getting used to the lap of luxury, US Immigration brings us briefly back to earth. For about thirty minutes, smiling is strictly forbidden and we’re reminded that we might all be on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. We make it through and high tail it to the US Helicopter departure lounge with just minutes to spare. Their Newark/Manhattan transfer takes just eight minutes and includes views of Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty. For two, it’s four times more expensive than a cab, but seven times faster and twenty times more enjoyable.

After negotiating the rush hour traffic at breakneck speeds, our taxi finally arrives at Dream, a fashionable boutique hotel from Vikram Chatwal Hotels. The lobby is a mélange of contemporary colonial design and Asian fusion, a cocktail that delivers a decadent finish. Our room is a spacious suite on the 10th floor with views down Broadway.

Amalia, Dream’s restaurant, is one of the most popular hangouts in town and is soon bustling with chic suits and their molls. Because of the ‘2 for 1’ offer on the dollar against the pound, we have made a commitment to indulge ourselves, although I am wondering if our excess will be our curse. After all, two for one is an old retail trick that drives people to buy what they don’t really need. Before you know it we’re drinking ‘double doubles’. Whether we need them is debatable.

I’ve only been in New York for a day and already I am having trouble understanding the parameters of the tipping culture. Just when do you stop? After a 10 dollar 50 cent cab ride, my girlfriend is offering up 15 dollars; soon it’ll be double doubles all over again. I have become the strict keeper of the purse, as her negotiations will soon result in our bankruptcy. Day two hits the feet hard; Bergdorf’s, Barney’s, Balthazar and Bollinger. Balthazar is a popular brunch/lunch hang-out that attracts a mix of New Yorkers and Euros, drawn by the old school approach to service, menu and art deco design.

Evening arrives, so we enjoy New York’s most captivating attraction from the comfort of Dream’s rooftop bar, the Ava Lounge; one of the best vantage points to capture Manhattan by night. I am told that ‘anybody who is anybody’ hangs out in the Meatpacking District these days, so to guard my integrity as a journalist I agree to follow the in-crowd in the name of research. A new club called 5/9th fits the formula for this district by the book; take building, use big hammer to further distress and apply basic industrial design to achieve look. It’s fun, the crowd is cool, but the atmosphere is stifled by the service approach, which seems to derive from the district’s heritage. We’re sat, we’re served, we’re dispatched; the whole dining experience lasted less than an hour. I’m all for quality service standards but I like give my stomach time to digest too.

Three hours after leaving Penn Station, we arrive at Greenport just in time for the shuttle ferry to Shelter Island. Despite being in the Hamptons, the island is more down to earth than the ‘WASP’ retreats of Southampton and West Hampton. However, Shelter Island has been a favourite amongst moneyed New Yorkers for decades, drawn perhaps by privacy and relative reclusion. A whistle stop tour paints a sleepy picture that reveals just how primitive the island is, although I get the feeling that those who ‘keep’ houses here like it that way. Through a mist of jaded decadence the grand beach houses echo a sense of, ‘what happens on the island stays on the island’.

Shelter is having a bit of a revival though, due to the attentions of Andre Balazs, renowned owner of Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont and The Mercer in New York. Sunset Beach is best described as ‘motel chic’. It’s simplistic design aside, the hotel is the place to be seen on the island. By day, the fun is on the beach with volleyball and water sports on offer and bicycles for those who want to explore the island. Although as we soon found out, it’s best to hire them in town, as Sunset’s were really only effective at going down hill. At weekends, dinner at Sunset Beach’s French brasserie is a must; there’s a party atmosphere thanks to a preppy/Euro crowd, the food’s excellent and it’s very laid back; you’d be as comfortable dressing up as dressing down. The rooms come fully equipped for lazy days, with DVD player, flat screen TV, music system and iPod dock, plus a tempting hamper, that can be best enjoyed on your private balcony overlooking the sea.

My one gripe with Sunset, was that getting anywhere on or off the island was a nightmare; you need a car. Of course you can’t hire one on the island, so we spent literally hundreds of dollars on the one and only taxi. Had we known this, we would have planned ahead and hired a car near Greenport. Frustration was solved by over indulging the local grape; very good it was too.

What the island lacks in practicality, it more than makes up for in the kitchen. Vine St Café was the highlight of our trip. Like many things on the island, somewhere totally unassuming manages to create something absolutely fabulous; to the extent that I have become quite a bore about it. The restaurant was absolutely packed and for good reason. Bouillabaisse is a house speciality and fully delivers on its promise; a creamy tomato stew filled with a half lobster, crabs claw, clams, mussels and tasty morsels of fish.

The following day, we dug deep and forked out a fortune to get to Easy Hampton in ‘the’ Shelter Island taxi, keen to pursue some retail therapy. The town fulfils the Hamptons stereotype to perfection, to the extent that it feels like we’ve walked onto the production set of a primetime TV soap, but its no bad thing. The shops have interesting unknown brands and we land on our feet at Babettes for lunch. A reproduction of a sixties, retro diner, that has clearly secured a loyal following with he local ‘fraternity’. The Cobb Salad is a handful but delicious.

Back in New York, we’ve checked into The Carlyle, one of the city’s grande dames situated between 5th and Madison. The hotel is an institution and regularly host’s jazz evenings with Woody Allen in the Café Carlyle. The lobby is beautiful; its art deco marble polished to within an inch of its life. The lift operators all wear white gloves and the concierge is an encyclopedia on what to do and where to go.

Our suite is on the 31st floor in the tower section of the hotel that has panoramic views of Central Park; we even have a grand piano in the living room although sadly it’s wasted on us. It is at times like this that I wish I had made a more concerted effort with my piano lessons at school.

Much to our shame, we have done little in the name of culture, so we head down 5th to The Frick Collection, housed in the former home of industrialist Henry Clay Frick who was one of America’s most celebrated art collectors, boasting works from grand masters such as Renoir, Monet, Rembrandt and Degas amongst others. My favourite is the ‘Pieta’, a painting he collected that was later revealed as a copy, after his daughter found the original work by German artist Konrad Witz and bought it as a gift. They sit adjacent to each other, so it’s possible to compare them. The copy was painted by a French artist, who added numerous differences.

Miraculaously, the concierge at The Carlyle had managed to secure us a table at the Cipriani with just a couple of hours notice. After all, who could resist Scampi Thermador. It’s a place to people watch; everyone seems to be slightly pre-occupied by everybody else. Clearly, so was I otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed. The service is impeccable and the food rewarding; thankfully the portions are more generous than the London branch too. Of course, it still didn’t beat Vine Street Café. We beat a retreat to Bemelmans, the piano bar at The Carlyle for a night cap where the party is in full swing.

I’ve decided that what I love about New York is, you get what you pay for. Despite the fact that I am still none the wiser about the tipping culture, service comes with a smile, nothing is too much hassle and if it doesn’t work, they’ll fix it. The same can’t be said about London, or the rest of the UK for that matter.

Despite the fact that the holiday has come to an end, I am not miserable about the journey home. We stroll into Newark International and head straight for the Silverjet lounge, catch up on world affairs that we had blissfully left behind and tuck into champagne and cucumber sandwiches. Onboard, I’m asleep after take-off and I don’t wake up until we touch down in Luton. How can I ever go back to the way things were?