Rebecca Engel
New York doesn’t ease you in. You come up out of the subway into a wall of noise and steam and people who all know exactly where they’re going, and the list of things you’re supposed to see is somehow longer than the trip you booked. Most first-timers try to cram in everything and end up spending the whole visit underground getting from one thing to the next.
So this is the short list. Here are 15 of the best things to do in New York City on a first visit, the ones actually worth your limited time, running roughly from the bottom of Manhattan up to the top of Central Park. Group two or three a day by neighborhood and you’ll see far more of the city than someone racing across it. If you want the full day by day version, there’s a 5 day New York itinerary that maps most of these out.
1. See the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
The ferry out of Battery Park is the only legal way onto Liberty Island, and the ride is honestly half the experience. Your ticket covers Ellis Island too, where twelve million immigrants first set foot in the country, and the museum there lands harder than most people expect.
Crown tickets sell out months ahead and involve 162 steps up a hot, narrow spiral staircase. Pedestal access is much easier to get and gives you the better view anyway, looking back at the Manhattan skyline across the water.
Book directly through Statue City Cruises and walk past anyone selling tickets near the park. Take the first ferry of the morning to beat the security line, and set aside about four hours for both islands.
2. Ride the Staten Island Ferry for Free
If the Liberty Island ferry is sold out or you’re watching the budget, the Staten Island Ferry does a version of the same trip for absolutely nothing. It’s a commuter boat, it runs 24 hours a day, and it passes within a few hundred yards of the statue.
Stand on the right side heading out for the statue and the harbor, then switch to the left coming back for the Lower Manhattan skyline. The round trip takes about 50 minutes including the five minutes it takes to get off and reboard at St George.
There’s no better free thing in the city, and most first-timers never hear about it. Go at sunset if you can time it right.
3. Pay Your Respects at the 9/11 Memorial
The two reflecting pools sit in the exact footprints of the towers, water falling into a void at the center of each, with the name of every victim cut into the bronze edges. It’s quiet in a way that nowhere else in Lower Manhattan manages.
The memorial plaza is free and open to anyone. The museum underneath costs money and takes a couple of hours, and it’s a heavy, beautifully done experience that not everybody will want to take on. Decide honestly whether it’s right for your group.
Free museum admission runs on Monday afternoons, though those slots get claimed the moment they open. The Oculus transit hall across the street is worth walking through either way.
4. Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge Into DUMBO
Walking the Brooklyn Bridge is one of the great free things to do in New York City. The gothic stone arches and the web of cables look better up close than in any photo, and the pedestrian path finally has its own lane, so you’re not dodging cyclists for a mile and a half.
Do it in reverse. Take the subway to DUMBO first, get the famous shot down Washington Street with the Manhattan Bridge framed between the brick warehouses, and poke around Brooklyn Bridge Park while it’s still quiet.
Then walk the bridge back toward Manhattan with the whole skyline in front of you the entire way. Early morning is best for the light and for having any room at all on the walkway.
5. Stand in Times Square After Dark
Times Square in daylight is a crowded intersection with too many costumed characters angling for tips. Plenty of New Yorkers will tell you to skip it entirely, and during the day they’re right.
At night it’s a different thing. The screens are bright enough to read a book by, and standing in the middle of all that noise and light is a genuine only-in-New-York moment. Go after 9pm when the tour groups have thinned out, and take the red steps at Father Duffy Square for a view over the whole intersection.
Then leave. Skip the chain restaurants and the people pushing comedy club tickets, walk ten minutes in any direction, and you’ll find a much better dinner in a much better neighborhood.
6. See a Broadway Show
A Broadway show is the thing first-timers regret skipping most. Even people who are sure they don’t like musicals tend to come out converted, because the production values here are on another level entirely.
Full price seats are steep, but there are ways around it. The TKTS booth under the red steps sells same-day tickets at a real discount, and most big shows run digital lotteries a day or two ahead where the seats go for a fraction of face value.
Wednesday matinees are the easiest tickets in town. If the show everyone’s talking about is sold out, the long runners almost always have something available and they’ve been running that long for a reason.
7. Look Up Inside Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central is a working commuter station that happens to contain one of the most beautiful rooms in the country. The main concourse ceiling is a painted night sky, gold constellations on green, and they’re laid out backwards because the decorators claimed it’s the view of the heavens from the outside looking in.
It’s free and it takes ten minutes. Stand up on the staircase at the east end for the view down across the marble floor and the four-faced brass clock in the middle.
Head downstairs to the whispering gallery outside the Oyster Bar, where two people facing opposite corners can hear each other perfectly across the room. The dining concourse down there is also a solid cheap lunch.
8. Take In the Skyline From Top of the Rock
Here’s the case for Top of the Rock over the Empire State Building: you can’t see the Empire State Building from inside it. From the top of Rockefeller Center it sits dead center in your view, with Central Park spread out behind you on the other side.
The decks are open air, so your photos aren’t fighting a pane of glass. Book a slot for about an hour before sunset and you’ll get the city in daylight, at golden hour, and fully lit up on one ticket.
Summit One Vanderbilt is the newer mirrored option if that’s more your thing, and Edge at Hudson Yards has the glass floor. Pick one. Doing two is money spent on the same view twice.
9. Walk the High Line
An abandoned elevated freight line on the West Side got turned into a mile and a half of planted walkway running thirty feet above the street. It’s the best idea this city has had in decades, and it’s free.
Start at Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District and walk north. The plantings are deliberately a little wild and change completely with the season, and there are benches, art installations, and viewing platforms cut out over the traffic below.
Midday on a weekend gets congested. Early morning is peaceful, and the full walk takes about 45 minutes if you don’t stop, which you will.
10. Eat Your Way Through Chelsea Market
Chelsea Market fills an old Nabisco factory where the Oreo was invented, now a long brick corridor packed with food stalls and small shops. It sits right at the south end of the High Line, so the two make an easy afternoon together.
Los Tacos No. 1 has a line out front for good reason. There’s also lobster, ramen, doughnuts, and a proper cheese counter, at the prices you’d expect from Manhattan.
Come at an odd hour, because noon on a Saturday is close to unbearable. Take your food a few blocks over to Little Island and eat it looking out at the Hudson.
11. Wander Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park
Greenwich Village is where New York stops feeling like a grid and starts feeling like a neighborhood. The streets go crooked, the townhouses are low and brick and covered in ivy, and the pace drops by half.
Washington Square Park is the heart of it, with the marble arch at the north end, a fountain full of kids all summer, chess hustlers working the southwest corner, and almost always someone playing a piano they somehow got in there.
Then just wander west toward Bleecker and Bedford with no plan at all. This is the part of the trip most people end up remembering, and it doesn’t cost a thing.
12. Spend an Afternoon in Central Park
Central Park runs 843 acres straight up the middle of Manhattan and it will happily swallow an entire afternoon. Bethesda Terrace, the Bow Bridge, Strawberry Fields, and the tunnel of elms along the Mall are the ones everyone comes for.
Rent a bike if you want to cover real ground, or walk in around 72nd Street and let it unfold. The Ramble is deliberately maze-like, and it’s the one spot where you can genuinely forget there’s a city out there.
Come back early one morning if you get the chance. Before 9am the park belongs to runners and dog walkers, and it feels like a completely different place.
13. Get Lost in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met holds more than two million objects and nobody sees it in a day, so go in with a short list. The Egyptian wing with the Temple of Dendur, the European paintings, and the arms and armor hall are the greatest hits for a first visit.
One thing worth knowing before you go: the famous pay-what-you-wish admission applies only to New York State residents and to students from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Everyone else pays the full ticket price, whatever older travel guides still say.
Your ticket also covers the Met Cloisters uptown on the same day if you’re ambitious. Three hours is a good visit, and the roof garden is open through the warm months with a view over the park.
14. Meet the Blue Whale at the American Museum of Natural History
The 94 foot blue whale hanging over the Hall of Ocean Life is the thing every kid remembers for the rest of their life. Upstairs, the fossil halls hold one of the great dinosaur collections anywhere in the world.
It sits on the west side of Central Park, so it pairs naturally with a park afternoon. The newer Gilder Center next door is worth walking through purely for the architecture, which looks like a canyon carved out of the inside of a building.
Same ticket rule as the Met, where pay-what-you-wish is for New York State residents only. Weekday mornings are calmest if school groups aren’t your idea of a good time.
15. Eat a Slice, a Bagel, and a Deli Sandwich
You can eat literally anything in this city, but three things are worth going out of your way for. A plain cheese slice, folded in half, eaten standing up. A bagel with cream cheese and lox from a proper appetizing counter. And a pastrami sandwich stacked well past reason.
Joe’s Pizza in the Village, Russ and Daughters or Ess-a-Bagel for the bagel, and Katz’s on the Lower East Side for the pastrami are the reliable answers. All three have lines, and all three are worth standing in one.
Beyond that, just eat wherever the line is longest at lunchtime. Cheap food is the thing New York does better than anywhere else, and it’s one of the best things to do in New York City that costs almost nothing.
Start Planning Your New York City Trip
New York rewards a loose plan far more than a packed one. Pick two or three things a day, keep them in the same neighborhood, and leave real gaps for wandering, because the walking between stops is usually where the trip actually happens.
If you’d rather have it all mapped out for you, the perfect 5 day New York itinerary puts most of these in order with a day by day plan that keeps the subway rides short.
Whichever things to do in New York City you settle on, book the timed tickets in advance, take the subway instead of cabs, and wear shoes you can put ten miles on. Everyone underestimates the walking, every single time.
