Every year we meet visitors whose itinerary is packed to bursting. By the end of the first day most of them are too tired to speak.
One area per day
Manhattan is bigger than it looks. Walking from downtown to midtown takes over an hour, and the subway plus transfers plus waiting eats a lot of time. The efficient move is to fix on one area each day and cover it properly.
- Day one: downtown. Financial District, Battery Park, Brooklyn Bridge.
- Day two: midtown. The south end of Central Park, Fifth Avenue, Times Square (go in the evening).
- Day three: uptown or Brooklyn, depending on whether you want museums or ordinary life.
Account for the jet lag
Flying in from Asia or Europe, most people hit a wall around three in the afternoon on day one. Rather than fighting it, keep the first day loose, get an early night, and day two will be worth twice as much.
The value of empty time
The best parts of New York tend to happen off-schedule — a market you walked past, a busker you stopped for, a bookshop you went into. Fill every slot and none of that can occur.
A concrete suggestion
Leave two hours unplanned every day. Most people find that those two hours produce the memory they talk about afterwards.
About Times Square
Many people put it first and come away disappointed. It is not really an attraction; it is an intersection with a lot of screens. If you want to see it, go after 8pm when the lights are at full strength. In daylight there is not much to it.
