New York: how many days you need and the best month to go

When to go, and what each month costs you

New York has four sharply defined seasons and two of them are genuinely uncomfortable. The shoulder months are not just nicer, they are a different city to walk around.

1. January: Think twiceJan
2. February: Think twiceFeb
3. March: Worth it, butMar
4. April: Worth it, butApr
5. May: Go nowMay
6. June: Go nowJun
7. July: Think twiceJul
8. August: Think twiceAug
9. September: Go nowSep
10. October: Go nowOct
11. November: Worth it, butNov
12. December: Worth it, butDec

• Go now
• Worth it, but
• Think twice

• September and October

  Go now

  The best weeks of the year

  Warm days, cool evenings, low humidity and the parks turning. Prices are high because everyone knows this, but it is the window that makes the walking version of the city work.

• May and early June

  Go now

  Spring, before the humidity arrives

  Comfortable and green, with outdoor life restarting across the city. By late June the humidity is setting in.

• March, April, November

  Worth it, but

  Unpredictable and much better value

  Genuinely variable — you can get either season in a single week — but hotel prices drop noticeably and the museums are calmer. Good for a trip that can move indoors at short notice.

• July and August

  Think twice

  Humid, and the subway platforms are worse

  High heat with high humidity, and the underground stations trap it. Many locals leave. The compensation is a dense outdoor events calendar, much of it free.

• January and February

  Think twice

  Cold enough to shorten every day

  Properly cold, with wind funnelled down the avenues. Hotel prices are at their lowest of the year, which is the only real argument for it — and a museum-led trip does work.

• Late November to December

  Worth it, but

  Peak atmosphere, peak everything else

  The city at its most photogenic and its most crowded, with prices to match. Thanksgiving week and the days around the new year are the busiest of the year.

How many days New York needs

Four days covers Manhattan without route-marching. Five lets you spend a day outside it, which is where the argument about what the city actually is starts to make sense.

The most useful structural decision is to give each day a north-south band rather than a list of sights. The subway is excellent for long hops and poor for short crosstown ones, so a day that zigzags will eat itself.

How the city is arranged

Numbered streets run east-west, avenues run north-south, and the whole thing is easy to read once you accept that the two axes are not the same distance.

• Lower Manhattan — the financial district, the memorial, the older street plan below Houston where the grid stops.
• Midtown — the tall, famous, crowded part. Efficient to cover, exhausting to linger in.
• Upper West and Upper East — the park between them, and most of the major museums.
• Brooklyn and Queens — across the river, and the reason to have a fifth day.

Where to stay, and why Times Square is the worst idea

In New York the subway runs around the clock, so connections are not the problem: the problem is price and what surrounds you when you leave the hotel. And there is a clear, counterintuitive answer: Times Square, where most people book on a first visit, is the worst place to sleep in all of Manhattan.

It is loud at any hour, full of chains, and there is not one restaurant worth eating in for several blocks. Ten minutes further south or east changes the whole trip and usually costs less.

Compare these areas against your priorities

From the airports into the city: three very different options

New York has three airports and the difference between them is large. JFK has the AirTrain connecting to the subway and to the LIRR commuter train; by subway it is cheap and slow, by LIRR it is pricier and considerably faster. LaGuardia is closer but has no train: you leave by bus, and there is now a route connecting to the subway at no extra cost.

Newark is in New Jersey, and although it sounds far, its AirTrain connects to a train that reaches Penn Station in a good half hour. By taxi, count tolls and the tunnel traffic, which is serious at the wrong hour.

• You pay the subway with a contactless bank card straight at the turnstile. There is no need for a MetroCard, and the system caps your weekly fare automatically.
• Express and local trains share the same tracks. It is the classic visitor error: boarding an express and surfacing sixty blocks away. The platform sign and the door sign both tell you.
• At weekends there are works and lines get rerouted without obvious warning. It is normal, and you read the notices stuck up in the station.
• Manhattan walks far more than it looks. Twenty blocks north to south is about twenty minutes; east to west, the blocks are much longer.

Leaving Manhattan: the other boroughs and the day out

The conversation about what New York really is starts when you leave Manhattan, and that is the reason to stay five days rather than four. The other boroughs are not day trips: they are a subway ride, they cost the same as any journey, and they hold half of what is interesting about the city.

• Brooklyn — Dumbo for the bridge photograph, Williamsburg for eating and going out, Prospect Park for a Sunday. You walk the Brooklyn Bridge, and it works better from Brooklyn towards Manhattan.
• Queens — the most linguistically diverse place on the planet and, consequently, the best cheap food in the city. Flushing and Jackson Heights are food destinations in their own right.
• The Bronx — the botanical garden and the zoo are among the best in the country, and Arthur Avenue is the real Little Italy, not the postcard one.
• The Staten Island Ferry is free, runs every half hour and passes the Statue of Liberty. It is the best free thing in the city.
• Hudson Valley or Beacon — an hour or so by train from Grand Central, for a day of art and mountains. It is the real day trip, and in autumn the colour justifies it.

Eating in New York, and the local rules

New York is an eating city and the traps are almost all concentrated in the tourist areas. The rule that spares the most disappointment: the closer to a monument, the worse and the pricier, and that holds for Times Square, the area around the Statue, and the foot of the Empire State.

The rest is understanding two customs that throw Europeans. Menu prices do not include tax and tipping is not optional in practice. Between the two, the final bill runs well above what you worked out when you ordered.

• Tipping runs around twenty per cent in table-service restaurants. Many card machines suggest it pre-calculated.
• Bagels, pizza by the slice and food trucks are the cheap food that actually defines the city, and they are not in restaurant guides.
• Good small places either take no reservations or book weeks out. Bar seating is often available same-day at places that seem impossible.
• Weekend brunch is an institution and in fashionable neighbourhoods the queues are long. Going at opening or on a weekday solves it.
• Drinking alcohol in the street is illegal and fined, whatever you see people doing with a paper bag.

Where to eat in New York, dish by dish

New York has the deepest restaurant scene on earth and the ones worth queueing for are mostly not the famous ones. These are the old institutions that survived, plus the format the city actually invented. The general rule that saves the most money: lunch specials and counter service cost a fraction of the same food at a table, and nobody thinks less of you for it.

• Katz's Delicatessen

  Institution

  The pastrami sandwich, and how not to get it wrong

  Open on the Lower East Side since 1888, and one of the last of a kind that used to be on every block. You are handed a ticket at the door — do not lose it, it is how you pay and there is a hefty replacement charge. Order at the counter rather than at a table, tip the cutter, and take it on rye with mustard.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Russ & Daughters

  Institution

  The other half of the Jewish food tradition here

  An appetizing store sells fish and dairy, historically kept separate from the meat delicatessen — this one has been in the same family since 1914. Smoked salmon, bagels, cream cheese. It is a counter with a ticket system, and the sit-down café nearby is a different and pricier operation.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Nathan's Famous

  Institution

  Coney Island, and the reason to go all the way out

  Selling hot dogs on the boardwalk since 1916, and the reason the subway to the end of the line is a day out rather than a detour. Best combined with the beach and the boardwalk in summer. The Manhattan branches are the same brand and not the same experience.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Chelsea Market

  Food hall

  Lunch out of the weather, without deciding in advance

  A former biscuit factory in Chelsea, now a food hall of two dozen counters — tacos, lobster, ramen, bakeries. It is touristy and genuinely useful: it is indoors, it is on the way to the High Line, and a group that cannot agree can each eat something different. Worst between noon and two.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Shake Shack

  Chain

  A cheap reliable meal that is not a compromise

  It started as a single cart in Madison Square Park in 2004 and is now everywhere. It earns its place for the same reason as the Tokyo chains on this site: when you are tired it is nearby, it is consistent, and it is better than it needs to be. The original park location still has the longest queue.

  Check it on Wikidata

Things that change the trip

1. 1Plan each day as a north-south band. Crosstown journeys are slow on the subway and the walking distances between avenues are longer than they look.
2. 2Many major museums use a suggested-donation or pay-what-you-wish policy for certain visitors. Worth checking the current rules rather than assuming a fixed price.
3. 3Subway service changes at weekends and overnight, sometimes substantially. A route that worked on Wednesday may not exist on Sunday.
4. 4Tipping is expected and structural to the prices you see. Budget for it rather than being surprised by it.
5. 5The observation decks all sell timed entry and all sell out. If one is on your list, book it before the rest of the day.