The 37 Best Things to Do in New York City

For locals and first-time visitors alike, seeing a Broadway show is a special experience, and one that is exclusive to New York City. Times Square is ordinarily a drag, but when you’re moseying into Midtown Manhattan for a show the bright billboards and lights don’t flash in your face—they dazzle in your eyes. A Broadway show's costumes, sets, songs, and stories are the stuff of dreams. In November, anticipated Spamalot—(parodying Monty Python and the Holy Grail) —and Harmony—a performance telling the true story of the Comedian Harmonists—take the stage.

It’s one thing to be in the midst of Manhattan, on the ground; it’s quite another to look upon it from across the river. In Brooklyn Heights, a couple subway stops away from lower Manhattan, the city’s image looms large before you. Arguably the best view of the skyline in the city, the Brooklyn Heights promenade hovers above the Brooklyn-Queen Expressway. Underlying the peaceful, tree-lined walkway, traffic rumbles below. The promenade stretches from Remsen Street at the south end to Middagh Street at the north. Around the corner, pedestrians can discretely cross a basketball court to access a suspended footbridge that zigzags down to the piers of Brooklyn Bridge Park. While in the picturesque neighborhood, make stops at the New York Transit Museum, the Sardinian trattoria River Deli, and the old-time dive bar Montero.