Things to do in New York City

The things worth the queue

A small number of New York attractions justify the crowds and the ticket price. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one — it is genuinely among the two or three best museums on earth and you cannot see it in a day. The view from the Empire State Building at night is another. The Staten Island Ferry is free, runs around the clock, and passes the Statue of Liberty; it remains the best-value thing in the city.

Central Park does not need a plan. Enter at any corner and walk. The Ramble in the middle is the part most visitors miss.

Museums

• ▸The Met, Fifth Avenue at 82nd — allow half a day minimum, and note the roof garden is open in warm months
• ▸MoMA, West 53rd — the modern collection, best on a weekday morning
• ▸The Frick and the Neue Galerie — small, concentrated, and far calmer than the Met
• ▸The Whitney at the base of the High Line — American art, with terraces over the Hudson
• ▸The Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side — booked tours only, and worth booking
• ▸The Cloisters in Inwood — medieval art in a monastery reassembled above the Hudson
• ▸The 9/11 Memorial and Museum — allow time, and expect it to be affecting

Parks and walking

The High Line runs from Gansevoort Street to Hudson Yards on a disused elevated railway and is best walked early before it fills. Brooklyn Bridge Park has the finest skyline view in the city and is the correct place to end a walk across the bridge — cross from Manhattan to Brooklyn, not the other way, so the skyline is ahead of you.

Prospect Park in Brooklyn is by the same designers as Central Park and, many argue, the better of the two. Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx is three times the size of Central Park and almost empty.

Eating, by area

• ▸Flushing, Queens — the best Chinese food in the eastern United States, by a wide margin
• ▸Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights to Corona — Ecuadorian, Colombian, Mexican, Thai
• ▸Arthur Avenue, Belmont — the real Little Italy, a working retail street rather than a themed one
• ▸Brighton Beach — Russian and Central Asian, and an ocean beach at the end of it
• ▸Sunset Park — Fifth Avenue for Mexican, Eighth Avenue for Brooklyn's largest Chinatown
• ▸The Lower East Side and East Village — the highest density of good bars in Manhattan

Live performance

Broadway is the obvious answer and TKTS in Times Square sells same-day tickets at a discount, though the queue is long. Off-Broadway is frequently better and always cheaper.

For music, the Village Vanguard and Smalls for jazz, Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle for piano, Brooklyn Steel and Music Hall of Williamsburg for touring bands. Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center need no introduction, and both sell rush tickets.

Things that are overrated

Times Square is worth ten minutes and no more, and the restaurants immediately around it are the worst value in the city. The Statue of Liberty crown requires booking months out and the view is better from the ferry deck anyway. Little Italy in Manhattan is three blocks of tourist restaurants; Arthur Avenue in the Bronx is what you actually want.