Your New York Vacation: Don’t Miss a Thing!

New York is really two trips wearing one name. There is the city, eight and a half million people stacked into five boroughs, and there is the rest of the state, a sprawl of mountains, lakes, and small towns that most visitors never reach. Trying to see all of it in one visit is a good way to see none of it well. Here is how to plan a trip that actually fits, whether you have a long weekend in Manhattan or a week to wander upstate.

The state, and the city inside it

First, the thing everyone gets tangled up in. When people say "New York," they usually mean New York City, the five boroughs where the subway runs and the buildings block the sky. But New York is also a state that stretches from the Atlantic all the way to the Great Lakes, and its capital is Albany, not the city. The distinction matters when you plan, because a hotel in Times Square and a cabin in the Adirondacks are a five-hour drive apart.

Manhattan is where most first-timers start, and for good reason. It is dense enough that you can walk from a world-class museum to a Broadway theater to a slice of pizza in an afternoon. The trick is to pick a few things you actually care about instead of chasing the whole list. Below are the categories worth building a trip around.

Museums to lose an afternoon in

New York has more great museums than any reasonable person can visit in a week, so choose by mood. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the big one, two million square feet of everything from Egyptian tombs to Rembrandts, and you could spend a full day inside and still miss a wing. The American Museum of Natural History is the one with the blue whale hanging from the ceiling and the dinosaur halls kids remember for the rest of their lives. For modern work, the Museum of Modern Art holds Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Monet's "Water Lilies," and the spiraling Guggenheim is worth the ticket for the building alone.

Entertainment, from Broadway to the ballet

The theater district in Midtown Manhattan is the reason a lot of people book the trip in the first place. Broadway runs shows every day of the week, and if you did not plan ahead, the TKTS booth in Times Square sells same-day seats at a steep discount. Off-Broadway is cheaper still and easier to get into, and it is where plenty of eventual hits are quietly running before anyone has heard of them.

The stage does not end at Broadway. The New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre both perform at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall books everyone from classical soloists to touring acts, and the New York Philharmonic is one of the oldest orchestras in the country. Come around the holidays and the Radio City Rockettes are doing the show they rehearse all year to put on.

Food worth planning your day around

You cannot eat badly in New York unless you try. The range runs from Michelin-starred tasting menus to a corner slice folded in half, and both are correct. Katz's Delicatessen has been carving pastrami on the Lower East Side since 1888 and still does it by hand. Joe's Pizza is the plain-slice standard against which the others are measured. And Magnolia Bakery built its name on a cupcake that is worth the line. The smart move is to build one meal into each day as a fixed point and let the walking between museums and shows fill in the rest.

If you like the idea of the island as a keepsake more than a magnet, the Manhattan serving tray puts the street grid and the two rivers on something you actually set the coffee down on.

The landmarks you already picture

Some sights earn the cliche. The Empire State Building is 102 stories tall, and the view from the observation deck is still the one every skyline photo is trying to copy. Central Park covers 843 acres in the middle of all that concrete, big enough that you can get genuinely lost in it, which is the point. Take the ferry out past Ellis Island to the Statue of Liberty, where you can book a slot to climb up into the pedestal or the crown. And the 9/11 Memorial, two reflecting pools set into the footprints of the towers that fell in 2001, is the quietest place in a loud city and worth the visit.

Do not skip upstate

Everything above happens below 110th Street, and that is the mistake most visitors make. Drive a few hours north and the state opens up. The Adirondacks hold six million acres of protected forest, more than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon combined, with Lake Placid at their heart, a town that has hosted the Winter Olympics twice. West of there, the Finger Lakes are eleven long, narrow lakes gouged out by glaciers, now lined with waterfalls, wineries, and some of the best swimming in the Northeast. And if you follow baseball, Cooperstown sits on the shore of Otsego Lake with the Baseball Hall of Fame in the middle of it.

That baseball detour is fitting, because New York and its neighbors run one of the great rivalries in American sport. The Yankees and the Boston Red Sox have been at it since 1919, when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to New York and spent the next 86 years regretting it. The bad blood carried into football too, when the Giants beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl and ended their perfect 16-0 season. Half the fun of visiting is picking a side.

Bring the map home

People have collected souvenirs for as long as they have traveled, and a good one does more than sit in a drawer. Instead of another magnet, plenty of visitors mark the trip with a wood map, the water and the shoreline carved to true depth so the place stays on the wall long after the trip ends. Every Woodchart is cut and stacked by hand from layered birch, one depth contour at a time.

Our New York collection runs from Manhattan and Staten Island up through Lake George and the Finger Lakes, so whichever New York you fell for has a place to land. Planning a longer trip up the shoreline? The rest of the East Coast charts are right next door.