New York is the most written-about city on earth and one of the worst served by that writing, because so much of what is published about it describes arrangements that have since changed. Shops close, restaurants move, viewing platforms open, and the way a visitor pays to get around has been replaced outright.
What follows is eleven articles written for somebody coming from Britain, with the perishable detail deliberately left out. Admission charges, opening hours and the names of particular restaurants are not here: they go out of date faster than anything can keep up with, and each institution's own website is the only reliable source for them. What is here is the part that stays true — how the city is laid out, what each area is actually like, which things are worth the time and which are not.
Three things worth knowing before anything else
The entry requirement can fail before the flights are booked. British citizens apply online for an ESTA, but anyone who has visited Cuba since January 2021 — or Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or Yemen since 2011 — is ineligible and needs a full visa with an appointment. Cuba being an ordinary British holiday, this catches people out badly and late.
The MetroCard has gone. Nobody buys a card and swipes it any more. Payment on the subway and buses is by tapping a contactless bank card, a phone, or an OMNY card bought at a station — and fare capping only works if every single tap uses the same card or the same device.
Twenty blocks is a mile. That single conversion turns an intimidating address into a fifteen-minute walk, and Manhattan is far more walkable than its reputation suggests.
The commonest mistake is attempting too much. The distances on a map flatter the time things take.
What is in this section
In rough reading order:
- New York for a first visit — the groundwork. Entry requirements, getting in from the airports, paying for the subway, reading the grid, tipping and sales tax, and when to go.
- The making of New York — four hundred years, and where the history is still standing and free to look at.
- Manhattan, neighbourhood by neighbourhood — what each part of the island is like, south to north, and which of the great avenues rewards a walk.
- Lower Manhattan — the Dutch town, the memorial pools, and the cheapest full day in the city.
- Times Square and Broadway — why the lights are a planning requirement, and how to actually get a theatre ticket.
- Central Park — an entirely constructed landscape, and the village that was cleared to build it.
- Skyscrapers and observation decks — five towers now compete for the same visitor. Which view each one gives.
- New York's museums — how admission really works, which free evening a visitor can use, and the one at the top of the island to make an effort for.
- Music, theatre and comedy — only the rooms that have outlasted everything around them.
- Brooklyn — an independent city until 1898, and worth two or three days.
- The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island — the three boroughs almost nobody reaches, and the best food in the city.
A note on what is left out
Where older guidance to New York is wrong, these articles say so plainly rather than quietly correcting it — because the errors are repeated everywhere and a reader who has met them elsewhere deserves to know which version to trust. The Stock Exchange cannot be visited. The Chrysler Building has no observation deck. Cars were banned from Central Park. The US Open left Forest Hills in 1978. Pay-what-you-wish at the Met is for residents only.
None of which is a reason to be daunted. It is a large, loud, expensive and extraordinary place, and a week spent walking it is better than a fortnight spent queueing.