You have four days and a long list. Here is what to cut.
Which harbour boat actually lands on Liberty Island. What a carriage through Central Park costs before the driver names a number. Whether SUMMIT beats the Empire State at sunset. Reviews of every tour you can book in New York.
The four bookings a first New York trip is built around.
A harbour boat, an hour in the park, one deck high enough to make sense of the grid, and the morning downtown. What each costs and what travellers say about it.
01The harbour morningStatue of Liberty & Ellis Island with FerryThe ferry that lands on Liberty Island and Ellis Island rather than sailing past them. Take the first sailing and you are back for lunch.
02The park hourCentral Park Pedicab Guided ToursA pedicab covers Bethesda Terrace, Bow Bridge and Strawberry Fields in an hour. Book it and the fare is settled before you sit down.
03The evening deckSUMMIT One Vanderbilt TicketsMirrored floors ninety-three storeys up, with the Chrysler Building framed in the glass. Take the slot half an hour before sunset.
04The downtown morning9/11 Memorial, Ground Zero Tour with Optional 9/11 Museum TicketThe memorial pools, the Oculus and the museum under the plaza, walked with a guide who was here on the day.
Every good photograph of the New York skyline was taken from a boat.
Three different days leave from the same few piers and they are not interchangeable. One lands on the islands, one loops past Liberty in an hour, one goes all the way round Manhattan with a guide talking the whole way.
Central Park is two and a half miles long. Nobody walks all of it.
What people came for sits in the bottom third: Bethesda Terrace, Bow Bridge, the Mall, Strawberry Fields. A pedicab or a carriage covers those in an hour, a bike gets you to the reservoir and back, a guided walk fills a morning.
- 1Central Park Pedicab Guided Toursfrom $38
- 2Private Central Park Pedicab Tourfrom $38
- 3Central Park Bike Rentalsfrom $9
Six pieces of New York, and the best day out in each.
The park, the memorial and the tower that went up beside it, the bridge everybody walks at dawn, the theatre blocks, the brownstones uptown and the crooked streets the grid never reached. Start where your hotel is.
The New York tours more people book than anything else.
Every New York review →Timed tickets, harbour ferries and the two observation decks that carry most of the city’s visitors between them.
1
SUMMIT One Vanderbilt Tickets
Visit SUMMIT One Vanderbilt above Grand Central for three floors of mirror rooms, glass skyboxes, silver balloons, panoramic views, and a rooftop terrace. Allow 90 minutes to two hours. Choose daytime or Air at Night, with cocktails, music, and city lights after dark.
From · $47
Read our review →
2
Empire State Building Tickets – Observatory & Museum
from $47
3
Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island with Ferry
from $19
4
American Museum of Natural History Ticket
from $37
5
Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Tour: All Options
from $69
6
New York in One Day Guided Sightseeing Tour
from $99
7
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Entry Ticket
from $30
8
One World Observatory Skip-the-Line Ticket
from $30
Four decks, one skyline, and only some of them put the Empire State in the picture.
That is the whole argument. Stand on the Empire State and the building missing from your photograph is the Empire State. Top of the Rock and SUMMIT both frame it. One World looks south over the harbour instead, and a helicopter shows you all of it in twelve minutes.
The sixteen acres below Vesey Street take a morning, and a guide is the difference.
Everything downtown →
The plaza is open to the street and free to walk. What you are choosing between is the museum underneath it, a guide who was living in these streets in 2001, and the observatory on top of the tower that replaced the towers.
Walked with a guide
The pools, the survivor tree and the footprints of the towers, explained by someone who watched it happen from this neighbourhood. The plaza itself costs nothing to enter.
The collection under the plaza
The slurry wall, the last column, the recovered ladder truck. Entry runs on timed slots, and the first hour of the day is by far the quietest one to walk it in.
One World Observatory
A hundred storeys up, facing south over the harbour rather than north over the grid. The lift ride is part of the ticket and the view arrives all at once.
What a day out in New York actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A surprising share of the city’s best hours cost less than a Midtown lunch.
Park rides, harbour hops, neighbourhood walks, museum entry and the cheaper decks.
Food walks, the full island day, Broadway stalls and the guided mornings downtown.
Helicopters, private guides, the long coach day to Niagara and the once-a-trip splurges.
- 1New York CityPASS®: Save up to 41% at 5 Top Attractionsfrom $154
- 2Manhattan Helicopter Tourfrom $299
- 3Manhattan Sightseeing Helicopter Tourfrom $299
Three New York evenings that exist nowhere else.
Every big city has a food tour and an open-top bus. A Brooklyn street lit like a fairground in December, a Sunday choir in Harlem and forty theatres inside six blocks are local.
The Dyker Heights lights
From the last week of November a dozen blocks of southwest Brooklyn go up in animatronic reindeer, forty-foot soldiers and enough wattage to be visible from the Belt Parkway. Householders hire professional decorators and compete openly. Coaches run from Manhattan and take about four hours door to door, most of it worth it.
- 14-Hour Dyker Heights Holiday Lights Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,426 reviews
- 2Dyker Heights Christmas Lights & Skyline View Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,192 reviews
- 3Dyker Heights Lights & Skyline Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,005 reviews
Gospel in Harlem
Several Harlem congregations welcome visitors to Sunday service, and a handful of Wednesday concerts cover anyone who cannot make the weekend. Dress as you would for a wedding, sit where you are shown and leave the camera in your bag. The music is the reason people come; the sermon is what they quote afterwards.
- 1Harlem Hallelujah! Gospel Wednesday Concert★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,638 reviews
- 2Harlem Gospel Live Music Concert★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,479 reviews
- 3Harlem Sunday Morning Gospel Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 995 reviews
Forty theatres, six blocks
Broadway is a geography rather than a genre: the theatres cluster between 41st and 54th, west of Sixth. Long-running titles sell out months ahead for weekend evenings, while a Wednesday matinee often still has stalls seats a fortnight out. The lottery and rush queues are real, and they form early.
- 1Aladdin the Musical on Broadway★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,800 reviews
- 2The Lion King on Broadway★★★★★★★★★★ · 1,609 reviews
- 3Moulin Rouge! the Musical on Broadway★★★★★★★★★★ · 1,329 reviews
Four New York bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this city can be decided over breakfast. These four run on timed entry, curtain times, ferry capacity and a season that lasts five weeks.
- 01SUMMIT One Vanderbilt TicketsEntry is timed, and the half hour before sunset is the slot everybody wants. It goes first, every day of the year.
- 02The Lion King on BroadwayWeekend evenings for the long-running shows sell weeks out. Midweek matinees are the seats that survive.
- 03Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island with FerryFerry capacity is fixed and the pedestal carries its own separate ticket. Turning up on the day buys you a queue at Battery Park, not a boat.
- 044-Hour Dyker Heights Holiday Lights Bus TourThe lights run from late November to early January and December weekends sell out. Outside those five weeks there is nothing to see.
January in New York is a museum city, and it is very good at it.
Wind comes down the avenues off the Hudson and the park stops being fun by mid-afternoon. Indoors is not a compromise here: two of the great museums on earth, decks that are glassed in and heated, forty warm theatres, and a food tour that spends most of its time in kitchens anyway.
Day four, when New York starts to feel like the only place there is.
The coach belt runs north to the falls, south to two older capitals and up the Hudson to the estates. Niagara is a very long day and honest about it. Washington and Philadelphia are pre-dawn starts. The Hudson Valley is the gentle one, an hour out on the train line.
- 1Guided Day Trip to Washington DC by Van or Busfrom $104
- 2Washington and Philadelphia 1-Day Tourfrom $104
- 3Washington DC Highlights, 1-Day Tour from NYCfrom $129
By neighbourhood
By kind of day
Downtown, the park, then Brooklyn: the run that works.
Downtown
A deck at dusk
Broadway
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