4 Days in New York City: The First-Timer's Ultimate Guide

New York: The City That Invented Itself

No city on Earth has a mythology quite like New York's. It is the place where everyone arrives expecting the films and finds something both better and more complicated: dirtier, louder, more diverse, more genuine. The skyline from the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk. The subway at rush hour. A bagel from a corner deli at 7am. These are the experiences that explain why people who live here for decades can't imagine living anywhere else.

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Day 1 — Midtown Manhattan: The Icons

Central Park and the Upper West Side

Begin in Central Park — 843 acres of green space in the middle of the world's most vertical city, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1858. Walk the Mall, visit Bethesda Fountain (the central scene of a dozen films), circle The Lake, and climb to Belvedere Castle for the park's best interior view.

Breakfast at Barney Greengrass (Upper West Side, 541 Amsterdam Ave) — one of New York's great Jewish appetizing stores: smoked salmon, cream cheese, bagels, coffee. Budget around $20 per person.

MoMA and Midtown

The Museum of Modern Art (entry $25, includes same-day re-entry) houses the world's finest collection of modern and contemporary art: Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Van Gogh's The Starry Night, Warhol, Pollock, Kahlo. Allow three hours minimum.

Walk south to Times Square — you are required to witness it at least once, preferably at dusk when the screen-lit streets are at maximum intensity. Ten minutes is sufficient. Then escape immediately to Hell's Kitchen to the west, where New York's best restaurant density competes with the lowest tourist-to-local ratio in Midtown.

Evening: the Top of the Rock observation deck at 30 Rockefeller Plaza ($40, booking required) at sunset. The view includes the Empire State Building — which you cannot see from the Empire State Building.

Day 2 — Lower Manhattan: History, Water and Brooklyn

Downtown and the Financial District

Begin at Battery Park for the free view of the Statue of Liberty from the southern tip of Manhattan. The Liberty Island ferry ($24) is worth it if you have the time. The Staten Island Ferry is free and equally dramatic.

Walk north through the Financial District to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum — one of the most important and affecting museum experiences in the United States. The twin reflecting pools on the exact footprints of the towers, with the names of nearly 3,000 victims inscribed around their edges, is profoundly powerful. Budget two to three hours. Museum entry: $33.

Brooklyn Bridge and DUMBO

Walk the Brooklyn Bridge eastward toward Brooklyn (30 minutes, pedestrian path above the traffic). The view of lower Manhattan from the bridge's midpoint is one of the great urban photographs.

Land in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) — Brooklyn's most photogenic neighbourhood. The famous view of the Manhattan Bridge framed through a Washington Street alley is here. Lunch at Juliana's Pizza (under the bridge) or Grimaldi's — New York's best pizza, both originating from the same spot.

Spend the afternoon in Brooklyn Heights (brownstones, the Promenade with Manhattan views) and Cobble Hill (neighbourhood restaurants, independent bookshops).

NYC Transport

Buy an OMNY card or use your contactless bank card on the subway (all lines) and buses. Single fare: $2.90. A 7-day unlimited card ($34) makes sense for stays of four days or more. Download **Citymapper** — it handles New York's subway complexity better than Google Maps.

Day 3 — Brooklyn Heights, Greenwich Village and the High Line

West Village and Greenwich Village

Cross back to Manhattan and spend the morning in the West Village — New York's most beautiful neighbourhood: quiet tree-lined streets, red-brick townhouses, independent restaurants and coffee shops that have been feeding the city's writers and artists for a century. Breakfast at Buvette (Grove Street) — a tiny French-ish bistro that serves the best eggs in New York and excellent coffee.

Washington Square Park marks the gateway to Greenwich Village: the fountain, the arch, the chess players, the NYU students, the occasional street performer. This is where New York's folk and jazz scenes were born.

The High Line and Chelsea

The High Line is a 2.4-kilometre elevated park built on a disused railway line running from the Meatpacking District north to Hudson Yards. Walk its full length: changing art installations, views over the Hudson, excellent food stalls. Access is free.

At the northern end: the Vessel (Hudson Yards) and, if you have an art interest, the Whitney Museum of American Art ($25) which moved here in 2015 and houses the finest collection of 20th-century American art outside the Met.

Day 4 — The Metropolitan Museum and a Final Wander

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (suggested donation, but technically entry is pay-what-you-wish, minimum $30 for non-NY residents) is among the greatest museums on Earth. The Egyptian Wing with its actual Temple of Dendur, the Arms and Armour collection, the American Wing, the European Paintings galleries (Vermeer, Rembrandt, Caravaggio) — choose your focus and go deep.

Afternoon: The Strand Bookstore (corner of Broadway and 12th St) — eighteen miles of books in a New York institution. Buy something to read on the plane. Final dinner in the East Village: Momofuku Noodle Bar or Prune, depending on your appetite.