Plan your trip

A subway-only day that gets you the zoo or the botanical garden, a proper Italian lunch on Arthur Avenue, the Art Deco boulevard, and the free museum — with the bad walking cut out.

Walk over the bridge at breakfast, DUMBO and the waterfront park by mid-morning, then the museum-garden-park block of Prospect Heights for the afternoon — Brooklyn's two best clusters, joined by one subway ride.

Central Park at nine, the Met before the crowd, Grand Central and Bryant Park on the way down, then the High Line into Chelsea's free galleries and an evening of aimless walking in the West Village — the Manhattan that's actually good.

One elevated train, three neighborhoods, four or five small meals: a Long Island City skyline breakfast, Jackson Heights at noon, Flushing in the afternoon, and the Night Market on a summer Saturday evening.

Ride the free ferry past the Statue of Liberty, then actually get off: Snug Harbor's gardens and museums in the morning, the forest trails of the Greenbelt in the afternoon, and the skyline on the boat back — the quietest, greenest, cheapest day in the city.

A day in Brooklyn, a day in Queens, a day in the Bronx — each built around the borough's own best cluster and a single subway line, with Manhattan as the place you sleep and the skyline you look back at.

Ten things across all five boroughs that cost nothing at all — a free ferry past the Statue of Liberty, the best skyline view in the city, two great parks, a medieval-to-modern art survey in gallery form, and a beach at the end of the subway.

A free beach, the city's largest park, a free contemporary art museum, a Gilded Age cemetery with Duke Ellington in it, the Art Deco boulevard — and the exact conditions under which the zoo and the botanical garden are free too.

The bridge, the park under it, Prospect Park and its free summer concerts, a beach at the end of the subway, a street-art district, a cemetery with wild parrots, and the Botanic Garden's free windows — eight free things and the conditions on a ninth.

The park, the High Line, two hundred free galleries, the greatest train station interior in the world, a park in Midtown with free skating, and the neighborhoods that are best walked for nothing — plus the honest conditions on the Met.

The best skyline view in New York for one subway fare, the World's Fair park, a beach at the end of the A train, two neighborhoods that are free to walk and cheap to eat, and the free windows at the museums and gardens — Queens is the cheapest borough to enjoy.

The free ferry is the famous part; the rest of the list is forest trails bigger than Central Park, a fort under the Verrazzano, an empty boardwalk, the southernmost point in the state, a landfill becoming a park, and the grounds of an old sailors' home — all free, all reached by bus from the boat.

One subway stop from Grand Central: the best skyline view in the city from the waterfront, the most experimental contemporary art institution in the country, and Noguchi's own museum a walk north — a half-day that nobody from out of town thinks to take.

Brooklyn's cultural block: the city's second-largest art museum, a botanic garden with the best cherries in New York, and Olmsted's better park — all on one corner of Eastern Parkway, at the top of the 2 and 3 stairs.

The 7 train's middle stretch: a working-class Latin American neighborhood, the house Louis Armstrong lived in for thirty years, the park that held two World's Fairs, and on summer Saturday nights a market with food from dozens of countries under a price ceiling.

The twenty-minute Bronx: three subway lines to the stadium, a free contemporary art museum a fifteen-minute walk up the boulevard, and the boulevard itself — one of the largest runs of Art Deco apartment buildings on earth — for an afternoon before or after the game.

The green, hilly, half-suburban top corner of the Bronx: a public garden on a bluff with the most composed view in the city, eleven hundred acres of park with a flat rail-trail through the woods, and the Metro-North ride up the river that is half the point.

The end of the 6: a mile of free beach, 2,700 acres of salt marsh and woodland, and a fishing village on an island at the end of a bridge that looks like coastal New England and runs on fried seafood — a summer day that most New Yorkers haven't taken.

The part of Staten Island you can actually reach without a bus: a ballpark with the skyline over the outfield, the borough's general-interest museum, a waterfront promenade, and ten minutes up the shore the old sailors' home that is now the cultural center of the island.

The West Side's free afternoon: the High Line overhead, the gallery district directly under it, Chelsea Market at its southern end, and the West Village a fifteen-minute walk south — all of it free except what you eat.

The gardens are the season — cherries in Brooklyn and Queens, the Botanical Garden's orchid show, Wave Hill waking up — and the parks are at their best before the heat: the case for a spring visit, borough by borough.

Hot, humid and the best free season of the year: three beaches on the subway, free concerts in two parks, outdoor markets every weekend, and the rules for doing any of it without melting — the case for summer, and how to do it.

September through early November is the best time to be in New York — clear, cool, the parks turning colour — and this is the list for it: the forests and cemeteries at their best, the walks that are too hot in July, and the marathon and the parade at the end.

Cold, short days, and the cheapest, emptiest version of the city: the museums you finally have time for, free skating in Bryant Park, the gardens' off-season free admission, the ferry at dusk, and the walks that are better without anyone on them.

Free, the first Sunday of November, and through all five boroughs — the one day the whole city is on the same street. Where to stand in each borough, how to move between them on the subway, and what not to do.

Free, Thanksgiving morning, two and a half miles down the West Side — and the whole route is not equal. Where to stand, when to be there, why the balloon inflation the night before is the better event, and what the subway does that day.

The last two weeks of summer in Flushing Meadows: the 7 train to the gate, the LIRR if you're in a hurry, the free Fan Week before the main draw, and the two neighborhoods either side of the park — Corona and Flushing — for food that beats anything inside the grounds.