New York is easiest to handle one area at a time. This route gives each day a single part of the city, starts at the southern tip of Manhattan and works north, then ends by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, so you spend your time in neighborhoods instead of on trains.
Day 1: Lower Manhattan
Take the first ferry of the morning from Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island; early boats have the shortest security lines, and the two islands together take most of the morning. Back on land, walk up through the Financial District past Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange to the 9/11 Memorial, where the two reflecting pools sit in the footprints of the towers. The memorial is free; the museum beneath it needs a ticket and two hours. Finish in the Oculus, then walk north through Tribeca to SoHo for the evening, or to Chinatown for dinner.
Day 2: Midtown
Start in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal, then walk two blocks west to the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and Bryant Park behind it. Continue up Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Rockefeller Center, and spend the afternoon at MoMA, a few minutes’ walk away.
Top of the Rock is the deck to choose if you want the Empire State Building in your view; book a timed slot about an hour before sunset.
For the evening, go up an observation deck (Top of the Rock, the Empire State Building, Summit One Vanderbilt or Edge), then walk through Times Square after dark to a Broadway show. The TKTS booth in Times Square sells same-day discounted tickets, but popular shows are worth booking directly and in advance.
Day 3: Central Park and the Met
Enter Central Park at its southeast corner near the Plaza Hotel and walk north up the Mall, the elm-lined promenade, to Bethesda Terrace and its fountain. From there Bow Bridge and the wooded Ramble are a few minutes to the west, and Strawberry Fields, the John Lennon memorial, is across the park near West 72nd Street.
Bow Bridge spans the Lake between Cherry Hill and the Ramble, a short walk west of Bethesda Terrace.
Spend the afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. It is too big to see in one visit, so pick two or three areas, such as the Egyptian wing with the Temple of Dendur, the European paintings and the American Wing. The Guggenheim is a few blocks north on the same stretch of Fifth Avenue, known as Museum Mile. Check opening days before you go: the Met, for example, closes on Wednesdays.
Day 4: Upper West Side, the High Line and the Village
Spend the morning at the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West, where the dinosaur halls and the blue whale are the highlights. Take the subway down to the West Village and walk the High Line, the elevated park built on an old freight rail line, north from Gansevoort Street. Stop at Chelsea Market near its southern end for lunch, and continue up to Hudson Yards and the Vessel if you have the energy. In the evening go back down to Greenwich Village for Washington Square Park and dinner on the streets around Bleecker Street, one of the best areas in the city for an unplanned night out.
Day 5: Brooklyn
Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan early in the morning, before 8am if you can. By mid-morning the walkway is packed, and walking toward Brooklyn keeps the Manhattan skyline behind you for the photos when you turn around. The crossing takes 30 to 45 minutes at an easy pace. Come down into DUMBO for the view of the Manhattan Bridge framed between the buildings of Washington Street, then walk the waterfront through Brooklyn Bridge Park and up to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. In the afternoon take the subway to Williamsburg for its shops, bars and the views back across the East River, or to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum if you would rather have a quieter last day.
Practical tips
The subway runs 24 hours a day. Pay with a contactless card or phone at the OMNY readers; the weekly fare cap applies automatically if you use the same card every time. Check whether a train is local or express before you board, and note that at some stations the uptown and downtown platforms have separate entrances on opposite sides of the street.
Book the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 Museum, observation decks and Broadway shows ahead, especially from spring to autumn and in December. Sales tax is added at the register, and tipping around 18 to 20 percent is expected at sit-down restaurants and bars. From JFK, the AirTrain connects to the subway and the Long Island Rail Road; from LaGuardia, buses link to the subway; from Newark, the AirTrain connects to New Jersey Transit trains into Penn Station.
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