New York New York

New York City: A Practical Guide to the First Trip

New York City is five boroughs covering 302 square miles with a population of approximately 8.3 million. Most visitors spend most of their time in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, which is understandable and also limits what you experience. The subway connects all five boroughs and is the only practical way to get around a city where taxis and rideshares are slow, expensive, and stuck in traffic most of the time.

A 7-day MetroCard costs $34 and covers unlimited subway and bus travel. Buy it at any station kiosk. Tap-to-pay with a contactless card works on turnstiles and is the quickest option.

The Neighbourhoods

Manhattan’s identity changes every 10-20 blocks in ways that matter for where you eat, where you go out, and what you pay. Understanding roughly where you are in the grid is useful: streets run east-west, avenues north-south. Fifth Avenue divides the island east and west. Lower Manhattan below 14th Street has Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, SoHo, Tribeca, and the Financial District; Midtown from 34th to 59th has Times Square, the major museums, and the tourist infrastructure; the Upper West and East Sides above 59th have Central Park, apartment blocks, and the better family-oriented museums.

Brooklyn is not, in 2024, the alternative to Manhattan. Williamsburg, Dumbo, and parts of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens are as expensive as Manhattan and more visited by certain demographics. The Brooklyn Bridge walk from the Manhattan side to the Dumbo/Brooklyn Heights side is 25-30 minutes and gives you the best views of the Manhattan skyline from the bridge level. Walk it east in the morning with the light behind you rather than in your face.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street is one of the two or three largest art museums in the world with approximately 1.5 million objects in the collection. Admission is $30 for adults and is technically a suggested donation (you can pay less), but the suggestion is strongly implied. The museum is too large to see in a day; pick two or three areas of interest and see those properly rather than walking everything.

The Met Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan is a branch museum dedicated to medieval European art, assembled in a structure built from actual dismantled medieval cloisters shipped from Europe. It is significantly less visited than the main museum and the collection is coherent rather than overwhelming.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on 53rd Street holds the 20th-century permanent collection: Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse, Warhol, Pollock. Admission is $25; free on certain Friday evenings. The sculpture garden is worth visiting in its own right.

Central Park

Central Park is 843 acres in the centre of Manhattan, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux and completed in the 1870s. It is the most-visited urban park in the United States. The Bethesda Terrace and Fountain at 72nd Street is the formal centrepiece; the Ramble in the middle of the park is a deliberately tangled woodland that functions as a migration bird trap and is one of the best birdwatching sites on the East Coast during spring and fall migration.

Sheep Meadow on the west side is the main lawn for sitting in the sun. The Great Lawn hosts free summer performances by the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera. The southern end of the park near 59th Street is the tourist-facing side; the northern end above 96th Street is where local people walk their dogs in the morning and the grass is less trampled.

Food

The serious food in New York City is not at the restaurants with the longest waiting lists or the most media coverage. It is in the outer boroughs and in immigrant neighbourhoods that have been cooking the same dishes for generations.

Flushing in Queens has the most comprehensive Chinese food outside of China: Cantonese, Sichuan, Shanghainese, Fujianese, Xinjiang lamb skewers. The main food court at the New World Mall below the Flushing Main Street subway station contains 30-40 stalls. Everything is $6-15. Take the 7 train to Flushing-Main Street (about 30 minutes from Times Square).

Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side has been open since 1888 and serves pastrami sandwiches that are the reference standard for the form. The pastrami is cured in-house, hand-sliced to order, and piled on rye bread. The price is around $25-30 for the sandwich. The restaurant is large, loud, and deliberately old. The system of tickets and paying at the counter has been the same for decades.

Peter Luger Steak House in Williamsburg Brooklyn has been serving dry-aged porterhouse steaks since 1887. It accepts cash only. Reservations book months out. The steak is legitimately the reason it has existed for 130 years.

The High Line

The High Line is a 2.3-kilometre elevated park built on a former freight railway on the west side of Manhattan between Gansevoort and 34th Streets. The park opened in sections between 2009 and 2014 and is now consistently among the most visited attractions in the city. It is crowded on summer weekends. Go early morning on a weekday and it is considerably more pleasant: the planting is interesting, the industrial heritage is legible, and the views of the Hudson River and the grid below are good.

The Whitney Museum of American Art is at the south end of the High Line at Gansevoort Street and is worth combining with the walk. The permanent collection of 20th and 21st century American art is strong and the rooftop terrace has unobstructed views over the river and downtown.