New York · United States
Eight and a half million people on a set of islands, with the best museums in the Americas and a subway that runs all night.
Photo: King of Hearts · CC BY-SA 3.0
New York is the least typically American of American cities, which is exactly why it works as a first visit. It is dense, vertical, walkable and served by a subway that runs 24 hours a day — none of which is true of most of the country. About 36% of its residents were born abroad, and around 200 languages are spoken here, which is the single fact that explains most of what the city feels like.
It is also, physically, five separate boroughs on a set of islands, and most visitors only see part of one. Manhattan alone is 21 kilometres long. Brooklyn has 2.7 million people and would be the fourth largest city in the country on its own. Queens is the most linguistically diverse place on earth. Treating New York as Midtown plus Times Square produces a bad trip; treating it as a collection of neighbourhoods produces a very good one.
The other thing to understand is that the famous sights are mostly not the best of it. Times Square is an advertising installation. The Statue of Liberty is better from the free Staten Island Ferry than from the queue. What New York actually offers is world-class museums, a food culture built by successive waves of immigration, and the pleasure of walking twenty blocks and passing through three completely different neighbourhoods.
Why visit
New York's case is density — of museums, of food, of things happening — combined with being the one large American city you can navigate entirely on foot and by train.
The Metropolitan Museum holds two million objects across 5,000 years. MoMA has Starry Night, the Demoiselles and Water Lilies. The American Museum of Natural History, the Frick, the Whitney and the Guggenheim would each anchor a smaller city. No other city in the Americas comes close.
The subway runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — almost unique among world metro systems — with 472 stations. Combined with walkability, it makes New York the easiest American city to visit without driving.
Jewish delis, Italian-American red sauce, Chinese in three regional varieties, Dominican, Greek, Georgian, West African, Korean. Queens alone has restaurants from perhaps sixty national cuisines, most of them cheap and most of them excellent.
341 hectares, entirely designed and built between 1858 and 1876 on what was swamp and rock. It is four kilometres long, has a reservoir, a rambling woodland, a lake and a castle, and locals use it constantly.
The West Village's crooked streets, the Lower East Side's tenements, Harlem's brownstones, Brooklyn's Brighton Beach with Cyrillic shop signs. Walking is how you see this and it is the best thing the city offers.
Main attractions
Two of the big museums is plenty for a five-day trip. The rest should be neighbourhoods, parks and food.
Two million works spanning 5,000 years, on Fifth Avenue at the edge of Central Park. The Egyptian wing includes a complete temple moved from Nubia; the European paintings and the American Wing are exceptional; the rooftop garden opens in summer.
Tip Pick two or three departments. New York State residents pay what they wish; everyone else pays about $30, valid for the same day only.
341 hectares of entirely constructed landscape running four kilometres up the middle of Manhattan. The Ramble is genuine woodland, Bethesda Terrace is the formal heart, and the reservoir loop is 2.5 km with the skyline all around it.
Tip Enter at 72nd Street and walk north. The park gets progressively quieter and more wooded above 90th Street.
Completed in 1883 and the first steel-wire suspension bridge in the world. Walking it from the Brooklyn side towards Manhattan gives you the skyline ahead the whole way, and DUMBO beneath it has the famous view of the Manhattan Bridge framed between warehouses.
Tip Walk from Brooklyn to Manhattan, not the reverse — the view is in front of you. Go early; by noon the walkway is crowded.
Two square voids on the footprints of the towers, with the names of the 2,983 dead inscribed around them and water falling into the centre. The museum below is unflinching and takes at least two hours.
Tip The memorial pools are free and open late. The museum is emotionally heavy — do not schedule anything demanding after it.
A disused elevated freight railway turned into a 2.3 km linear park running through the West Side, planted with the self-seeded species that colonised the tracks. It passes through Chelsea's gallery district and ends at Hudson Yards.
Tip Best early morning or at dusk. Enter at Gansevoort Street and walk north to avoid the busiest section.
The most important collection of modern art anywhere: Van Gogh's Starry Night, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Monet's Water Lilies triptych, and a strong photography and design collection.
Tip Smaller and more manageable than the Met — three hours does it. Free Friday evenings, which are correspondingly packed.
A free, 25-minute commuter ferry that passes directly by the Statue of Liberty in both directions. It runs 24 hours a day and costs nothing, which makes it the best-value thing in New York.
Tip Stand on the right side leaving Manhattan. You must disembark and re-board at Staten Island, which takes five minutes.
Three main options: the Empire State Building for the classic Art Deco experience, Top of the Rock for the view that includes the Empire State, and Edge or Summit at Hudson Yards for the modern glass-floor spectacle.
Tip Top of the Rock is the best photograph because the Empire State is in it. Sunset slots sell out weeks ahead at all three.
Things to do
The best days in New York involve one fixed thing and a lot of walking between neighbourhoods.
The West Village's pre-grid streets, the Lower East Side's tenement blocks, Harlem's brownstones along 125th Street, Williamsburg across the river. Twenty blocks on foot shows you more than any bus tour.
Tip Manhattan blocks run about 80 m north–south and 270 m east–west. Twenty north–south blocks is about a mile.
New York pizza is sold by the slice at counters for a few dollars, folded lengthwise and eaten while walking. It is a genuine institution and the neighbourhood counters are far better than anything near a tourist site.
Tip A good slice has a crust you can fold without it cracking. Avoid anywhere with a photograph of pizza in the window.
Broadway and off-Broadway theatre, jazz at the Village Vanguard or Smalls, comedy in the Village, opera at the Met. The city has more live performance in a night than most countries manage in a week.
Tip TKTS booths sell same-day Broadway tickets at 20–50% off. Off-Broadway is cheaper and frequently better.
Brighton Beach for the Russian-speaking boardwalk, Flushing for the best Chinese food in the country, Coney Island for the beach and the 1927 wooden roller coaster. All are 45 minutes and $3 from Midtown.
Tip Flushing's Golden Shopping Mall food court is a serious destination and costs almost nothing.
Yankees or Mets baseball from April to September, Knicks or Nets basketball in winter, Rangers ice hockey. Baseball tickets often start under $30 and the pace suits a first-timer.
Tip Yankee Stadium is 25 minutes from Midtown on the 4 train. Go for a weekday evening game.
The free Staten Island Ferry, the NYC Ferry to DUMBO or Williamsburg, or simply the Brooklyn Bridge on foot. New York is an archipelago and its best views are from the water.
Tip The NYC Ferry costs the same as a subway ride and the East River route is the most scenic public transport in the city.
Local food
New York food is immigrant food, layered over 150 years. The city's signature dishes are all somebody's home cooking, adapted and then adopted by everyone.
Wide, thin, foldable pizza sold by the slice from counters across the city. Brought by Neapolitan immigrants and reshaped entirely — the New York style is its own thing now, and the by-the-slice format is the point.
Where to try it Neighbourhood counters in any borough, not the tourist strips. A plain cheese slice is the benchmark.
Boiled then baked, dense and chewy, split and filled with cream cheese and cured salmon, capers and red onion. An Eastern European Jewish import that became the New York breakfast.
Where to try it Appetising shops on the Upper West Side and the Lower East Side. They should be made the same morning.
Beef navel cured, smoked, steamed for hours and hand-cut thick, piled on rye with mustard. A Romanian Jewish dish that arrived in the 1880s. The classic delis serve portions that feed two.
Where to try it The surviving Lower East Side and Midtown delicatessens. Order it hand-cut if the option exists.
Manhattan's Chinatown is largely Cantonese and Fujianese; Flushing in Queens has Sichuan, Xi'an, Dongbei and Shanghainese; Sunset Park in Brooklyn is the newest and largest. These are different cuisines, not variations.
Where to try it Flushing's food courts for the best and cheapest. Xi'an hand-pulled noodles are a good entry point.
Chicken or lamb over rice with white sauce and hot sauce, sold from street carts for around $10. Created by Egyptian and Afghan vendors in the 1990s and now one of the city's defining cheap meals.
Where to try it Carts throughout Midtown and Downtown, busiest at lunch and after midnight.
New York cheesecake is dense, baked and made with cream cheese rather than curd. The black-and-white is a large soft cake-like cookie iced half vanilla, half chocolate.
Where to try it Old delis and Jewish bakeries throughout the city.
Accommodation
New York hotel rooms are small and expensive by any standard. The trade-off is location, and staying outside Midtown usually buys more space and a better neighbourhood for less.
Transport
Three major airports serve the city and all three have public transport links. The Northeast rail corridor is competitive with flying to Washington and Boston.
Walk and take the subway. New York is one of very few American cities where a car is an active disadvantage.
When to go
New York has genuine four-season weather with hot, humid summers and cold winters. The shoulder seasons are excellent, and the city works in all of them because so much of it is indoors.
The city at its best. Central Park comes into leaf, outdoor dining returns, and temperatures run 15–26°C. May and early June are ideal; the humidity has not yet arrived.
Hot and very humid at 28–33°C, with the subway platforms notably worse than the streets. The compensation is free outdoor events, rooftop bars, the beaches at Rockaway and Coney Island, and slightly lower hotel rates as business travel drops.
The strongest season: clear, crisp, 12–24°C, with autumn colour in the parks through late October. September and October are peak for both weather and events, and hotel prices reflect it.
Cold at −3 to 7°C with occasional heavy snow. December is festive and expensive; January and February are the cheapest months of the year and the museums are blissfully quiet.
Worth planning around: The week between Christmas and New Year, when Midtown becomes impassable and hotel rates peak. Late January and February are the same city at half the price.
Itinerary
One major thing each morning and a neighbourhood each afternoon. Deliberately spreads across three boroughs, because staying in Manhattan is how people miss the city.
Start at the bottom of the island and work up.
One great museum, then the park it sits in.
Cross the river and stay there all day.
The vertical city, done deliberately rather than by accident.
The New York most visitors never reach.
Travel tips
New York specifics, several of which save real money.
FAQ
Five is right for a first visit — enough for two major museums, three or four neighbourhoods, a trip to Brooklyn and one outer-borough excursion, without spending the whole time in Midtown. Three days covers the headline sights and misses the neighbourhoods, which is where the city actually is. A week is not too long.
Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, because the view includes the Empire State Building and Central Park — the Empire State's own view does not include itself. Edge and Summit at Hudson Yards are the modern glass-floor spectacle. All three sell out for sunset slots weeks ahead, so book early or accept a daytime slot.
Yes, in ordinary use. It runs 24 hours a day and is used by millions daily. Standard city precautions apply — stay aware late at night, ride in a busier carriage in the small hours, and keep your phone in your pocket rather than in your hand near closing doors. It is by a wide margin the fastest way around the city.
No, and one would be an active disadvantage. Parking runs $40–60 a night, Manhattan below 60th Street now charges a congestion fee, and traffic is slower than the subway at almost any hour. New York is one of very few American cities where you can do everything on foot and by train.
Late January through February. The weather is cold, but hotel rates are at their annual low, the museums are quiet, and the city functions completely normally — most of what you came for is indoors anyway. The most expensive periods are September to early December and the week between Christmas and New Year.
For about five minutes, at night, to see the scale of the advertising. It is not a neighbourhood and it has no history beyond the screens; the restaurants around it are the worst value in New York. The theatres nearby are worth it — the square itself is not somewhere to spend time.
About $250–420 per person per day at mid-range — that is a $220–380 hotel room plus food, transport and one or two paid attractions. Add roughly 15–20% on top of advertised prices for sales tax, hotel fees and tipping. Costs come down substantially with a Brooklyn or Queens base, subway travel and eating at counters rather than sitting down.
Keep exploring
Places that pair well with New York City, whether you have a few spare days or are building a longer route.
District of Columbia, United States
A planned capital of low neoclassical buildings and wide avenues, holding the largest museum complex in the world and charging nothing to enter almost any of it.
Don't miss The National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture — free, and among the best of their kind anywhere.
Explore Destination — Washington, D.C.Illinois, United States
America's great architectural city, on a lake the size of a small country, with a museum of Impressionism to rival Paris and the blues clubs that shaped modern music.
Don't miss The architecture boat tour on the Chicago River — the best hour of sightseeing in any American city.
Explore Destination — ChicagoSouth Carolina, United States
A walkable colonial port with the best-preserved historic centre in the United States, an outstanding food scene, and a history of slavery that the city has increasingly stopped avoiding.
Don't miss The pastel houses of Rainbow Row and the double piazzas of Church Street, walked at 08:00 with nobody about.
Explore Destination — Charleston, South CarolinaÎle-de-France, France
France's capital packs more world-class museums, monuments and neighbourhood restaurants into six square miles than anywhere else in Europe. It rewards walking more than ticking off a list.
Don't miss The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and Sainte-Chapelle — three of Europe's great collections within one Métro ride of each other.
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