- Walk across Brooklyn Bridge (I prefer Brooklyn to Manhattan direction)
- Best burgers in the world – Bare Burger (multiple locations across the city). Try Jalapeno Express with a pint of Pale Ale
- Brunch at Yuca Bar in East Village (be ready for sangrias with your eggs)
- Park Slope (the lovely, but yuppie-fied, neighbourhood in Brooklyn, filled with iconic brownstone houses, leafy side streets, idiosyncratic boutique shops, and gentrified thirtysomethings pushing monstrous strollers around)
- Central Park
- Met Museum: THE museum to see in NYC. One of the largest collections in the world – several million pieces, including a massive collection of Egyptian artefacts (yes, thieves…) – is an incredible museum and you can spend hours and hours inside. It is a sliding scale admission, which means you pay what you can afford (including just $0.10, if that’s all you can afford). It’s located in Central Park, which means it is easy to fit into most itineraries.
- Guggenhaim Museum (as long as you hit the Met too)
- Grand Central – prettiest train station in the world
- New York Public Library: The NYPL main branch on 42nd and 5th is right in the heart of midtown New York, down the street from the Empire State Building and a couple of blocks from the Chrysler Building and Grand Central. It is a beautiful piece of faux-classical and feels about as New York as you can get. The interior of the library is lovely, with some gorgeous wood-bedecked reading rooms, and I have yet to find a better place to peoplewatch than the stairs in front of the library, with the two stone lions on either side and one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares in front of you. Behind the library is Bryant Park, which has a lovely grass field and plenty of benches, along with an al fresco cafe and free wi-fi
- Shopping on budget: Century21 (just outside Ground Zero). Ridiculously priced stuff from top brands
- Shopping with unlimited budget: go to Rockefeler Plaza, then walk within 2 mile radius. Prepare your credit cards for carnage
- Overhyped (but you probably will want a tick…): -Ground Zero -Statue of Liberty -Times Square (I will mock you if you waste any time in this godforsaken hellhole)