New York Without the Mistakes

New York is the world's most documented city and somehow still produces the same first-timer's trip, a midtown hotel, a queue at the wrong hour, dinner at a tourist trap with a view of another tourist trap, and sore feet by Saturday. None of it is necessary. The city is the easiest hard destination on earth, and the mistakes retire in one reading.

The city is three destinations by season, covered at length elsewhere in these pages, and the practical summary runs: October is the consensus best, late April and May the rival, December the pageant priced like one, and the value windows are January through early March, when the rates drop by a third and the museums and theaters run at full strength for the natives. The mistakes are July and August, when the city steams and half its residents leave, and the marathon and United Nations weeks in the fall, which book midtown solid and should be checked before any autumn dates are chosen.

Sleep downtown, the Village, Soho, Tribeca, or in the brownstone neighborhoods, and commute to midtown's sights, rather than the reverse, since midtown after business hours is a wind tunnel with theaters and downtown after dark is the city people move here for. Hotel rates swing violently by date rather than by neighborhood, so shop the calendar before the map. The mistake is paying a premium to sleep beside Times Square, which is the one place every local will tell you to visit once, briefly, at night, and never sleep.

Walk and take the subway, full stop. The subway runs all night, reaches everything, and costs a fixed fare that makes every taxi comparison embarrassing, and the walking is the actual attraction, since the city reveals itself at street level in a way no vehicle permits. The mistakes are the pedicabs, which are priced predatorily, the double-decker buses after their first orientation loop, and driving anything yourself for any reason. Comfortable shoes are not advice here. They are equipment.

Skip the observation deck queues at midday and book the timed evening slot instead, or take the free alternative, the Staten Island Ferry, which sails past the statue at no charge with the skyline arranged behind it. Skip the chain restaurants of the theater district and eat one neighborhood deeper in any direction. Skip the line for the famous cronut-of-the-moment, whatever it currently is, and skip any museum plan exceeding one museum per day, since the great collections here punish ambition and reward the chosen wing.

Book theater and the two serious dinners before the flight, buy the subway fare with a tap of the phone and skip the machine entirely, and plan each day as one anchor plus one neighborhood, letting the blocks between them do the rest. Budget one unplanned afternoon. The city spends it better than you will.

On the last evening, walk the Brooklyn Bridge toward Manhattan at dusk, which costs nothing, requires no reservation, and remains the single best thing the city offers at any price. The mistakes here are all indoor, expensive, and midtown. The city itself is outside, on foot, and mostly free, which is the one secret the postcards never mention.