New York has been written about so thoroughly that it feels impossible to say anything new. And yet every visit reveals something — a block, a bar, a park bench view — that no guidebook mentioned. New York does not give itself to quick visitors in the way that, say, Paris does. It requires patience and a willingness to get comfortably lost. Here is a neighbourhood-level guide to five days that will give you a genuinely layered reading of the city.
Lower East Side and East Village
This is where the immigrants came and where the punk scene happened and where rents eventually followed and where the best cocktail bars in the city now operate. Essex Street Market for morning snacking; Katz’s Deli for a pastrami on rye that will re-calibrate your understanding of what a sandwich can be; the New Museum for contemporary art; Attaboy or Death & Co for late-night cocktails in dark, impeccable bars. This neighbourhood requires late nights and slow mornings.
Brooklyn: Williamsburg to Greenpoint
Cross the Williamsburg Bridge on foot or by bike early on a weekend morning and drop into the Brooklyn side. The waterfront park has the single best view of the Manhattan skyline. Smorgasburg food market on weekend mornings; vintage shopping on Bedford Avenue; the Polish bakeries of Greenpoint for excellent pastries and an entirely different demographic than Williamsburg’s boutique coffee shops. Brooklyn rewards the visitor who abandons the map entirely and simply walks.
Central Park and the Upper West Side
Central Park is best at 7am on a weekday: runners, dog walkers, birders, the reservoir reflecting the skyline. The Reservoir Loop at sunrise is one of the great urban walks in the world. Afterwards: breakfast at one of the Hungarian pastry shops on Amsterdam Avenue, a morning in the Museum of Natural History, lunch in a diner. The Upper West Side still feels like the New York of Woody Allen films — slightly old, slightly literary, entirely unpretentious.