New Yorkfive days

The Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, museums and Broadway — no car, on foot and by subway.

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Route

Getting around

USA · 5 days

The whole trip is one city. You walk, and between neighborhoods you ride the subway: a car only gets in the way here, and parking costs more than the hotel.

Day by day

Day 1 · 9 placesArrival and an evening in Midtown
JFK → Manhattan: AirTrain and the train to Grand Central
  • Times Square
    At night it is as bright as day — screens ten stories tall on every side. Fifteen minutes to look and an hour to wander the side streets, 44th and 46th, where the theater marquees glow.
  • John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
    Where you land. From the terminal, the AirTrain to Jamaica, then the LIRR train — and 20 minutes later you are at Grand Central, in the middle of Manhattan.
  • Chrysler Building
    A steel Art Deco crown over 42nd Street — the most beautiful skyscraper in the city. Only the lobby is open: red marble, wood veneer and a ceiling painted with cars and airplanes.
  • Grand Central Terminal
    The station the city starts from: a green ceiling with the constellations (drawn backwards by mistake), the marble staircase and the whispering arch by the lower hall — stand in opposite corners and talk.
  • New York Public Library
    Two stone lions at the door and the Rose Reading Room on the third floor — a room the size of a football field where the city works in silence under a painted ceiling. Free.
  • Bryant Park
    A lawn behind the library, boxed in by skyscrapers: tables, a carousel, and by late October the huts of the holiday market. The best place to sit down and understand you have arrived.
Day 2 · 8 placesDowntown and the harbor: the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero
ferry Battery Park → Liberty Island → Ellis Island → back
  • Statue of Liberty
    What people come here for. Up close she is smaller than in the pictures, and more honest for it: a copper woman with a torch, green after a century. Walk around the island — the best view of Manhattan is from the back.
  • 9/11 Memorial
    Two black squares where the towers stood: water falls into them and vanishes into a second, smaller void whose bottom you cannot see. The names are cut into the rims. Standing here in silence is the whole point.
  • Battery Park
    The green tip at the southern end of Manhattan, where the ferries leave. Come early: screening before boarding happens here, and so does the first view of the harbor.
  • Ellis Island
    The island twelve million people came through on their way into the country. The tiled Great Hall, the suitcases, the lists of names — a museum about how newcomers became this city.
  • Charging Bull
    The bronze bull at the foot of Broadway and narrow Wall Street behind it: the Stock Exchange with a flag across its front, and stone canyons where the sun never reaches at noon.
  • Trinity Church
    For a hundred years this was the tallest spire in New York; now it is a quarter the height of its neighbors. In the old churchyard lies Alexander Hamilton — the one from the musical.
Day 3 · 7 placesThe Brooklyn Bridge, DUMBO and a musical
over the bridge into Brooklyn; subway back to the Theater District in the evening
  • Brooklyn Bridge
    A mile of wooden walkway over the East River, between two Gothic towers and a web of cables. The bridge is a century and a half old and still the best view of the city — the skyscrapers behind you, Brooklyn ahead.
  • South Street Seaport
    A piece of the old port: cobblestones, low 19th-century brick houses, masts of tall ships at the pier. From the roof of Pier 17 you see the Brooklyn Bridge — which is where we go next.
  • DUMBO
    Old warehouses under the Manhattan Bridge. On Washington Street people stand with cameras: the arch of the bridge fits exactly between the brick walls, with the Empire State behind it.
  • Jane's Carousel
    A 1922 carousel in a glass cube right at the water. By day it reflects the bridge, at night it glows from inside — one of the most photographed objects in Brooklyn.
  • Brooklyn Bridge Park
    A park along the river on the old freight piers: lawns, piers, swings by the water and Manhattan across the whole width of the view. The city’s best walk if you just want to go and look.
  • Brooklyn Heights Promenade
    A narrow terrace hung over the highway on the Brooklyn Heights bluff. The sun sets exactly behind the Downtown skyline — the shot everybody knows and few have seen with their own eyes.
Day 4 · 8 placesCentral Park and Museum Mile
the whole day inside the park and along Fifth Avenue
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art
    One of the three great museums of the world: a whole Egyptian temple, the American wing with a glass wall onto the park, the Impressionist rooms. Closed on Wednesdays; open until 9 p.m. on Fridays.
  • Columbus Circle
    The round plaza at the park’s southwest corner — the easy way in. A column with Columbus in the middle, and the only crossing in the city where cars drive in a circle.
  • Strawberry Fields
    A quiet corner of the park across from the building where John Lennon lived and was killed. One word in the mosaic on the path — Imagine — and almost always someone singing with a guitar nearby.
  • Bethesda Terrace
    The heart of Central Park: the elm avenue, the staircase with carved railings, the painted vault of the passage and the angel over the fountain. This is where you see the park is not a gap between buildings but a designed thing.
  • Bow Bridge
    A cast-iron footbridge over the lake — the one half of American cinema was shot from. In late October the reddest maple in the park stands next to it.
  • Belvedere Castle
    A small stone castle on a rock in the middle of the park, built as scenery and working as a weather station: New York’s weather is measured right here. From the terrace, the pond and the towers of the West Side.
Day 5 · 7 placesThe Empire State, the High Line and the flight home
Manhattan → JFK
  • Empire State Building
    The city’s symbol since 1931. Go right at opening: no lines yet, the air is clearer in the morning, and from the 86th floor you watch the island narrow toward the south. The lobby with its gold mural is worth the visit on its own.
  • Flatiron Building
    The 1902 “iron” on the sharp corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue: from the tip it is six feet wide. Best seen from the plaza across the street, on the way down from the Empire State.
  • Washington Square Park
    The arch, the fountain and a nonstop concert: chess players, street pianists, students from the university next door. The liveliest square in the city and the best place to sit on the rim and watch.
  • Bleecker Street
    Greenwich Village without the postcards: low houses with fire escapes, crooked streets that break the Manhattan grid, jazz clubs and pizza on the corners. The subway is five minutes away — and from there, the airport.
  • Chelsea Market
    A market in the old Nabisco cookie factory where the Oreo was invented: a brick corridor with pipes under the ceiling, stalls with oysters, tacos and noodles. You come straight down from the High Line.
  • Little Island
    An artificial island on concrete “tulips” right in the Hudson, opened in 2021. Hills, an amphitheater and a river view from above — twenty minutes to walk around, free.
Itinerary

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