One day in Brooklyn
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.
Brooklyn is not a neighborhood. It is two and a half million people across an area you cannot walk in a day, and the first mistake every visitor makes is trying to "do Brooklyn" as if it were one place. This day doesn't. It does two places properly: the waterfront under the bridges, and the cultural block on the edge of Prospect Park. They are the two densest clusters of worthwhile things in the borough, and they are one subway ride apart.
It starts in Manhattan on purpose. Walking the Brooklyn Bridge from the Manhattan side puts the skyline behind you and Brooklyn in front, which is the right direction for the photographs and the right direction for the day. Start early — before nine in summer — and you will have the walkway mostly to yourself. By eleven it is a queue.
Everything here is free except lunch, the museum if you choose to pay, and the garden if you arrive outside a free window.
The day
Walking the Brooklyn BridgeFree
Thirty to forty minutes at a photographer's pace. Take the 4, 5 or 6 to Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall and find the walkway entrance across from City Hall Park. Stay in the pedestrian lane; the cycle lane is policed by cyclists, and they are right. Don't stop dead in the middle — step to the side to take pictures.
Come off the bridge on the Brooklyn side and turn left down toward the water — ten minutes downhill on foot. No subway needed.
DUMBOFree
An hour. The cobblestones and the view of the Manhattan Bridge framed by warehouses are the postcard; get it and move on to the side streets, which are better. Coffee here, not breakfast — you are about to be in a park with better places to sit.
DUMBO runs straight into the park's northern end. Walk south along the water.
Brooklyn Bridge ParkFree
Ninety minutes, walking south through the piers toward Brooklyn Heights. The lawns on Pier 1, the soccer pitches, the pebble beach, the view back at the bridge you just crossed. If it is summer there is usually something free going on — outdoor films, kayaking, a concert. Lunch can be here, from the vendors, or wait for Prospect Heights.
From the Brooklyn Heights end of the park, walk up to the 2 or 3 at Clark Street — ten minutes uphill — and ride to Eastern Parkway–Brooklyn Museum, about fifteen minutes. The station stairs come up at the museum's front door.
Brooklyn MuseumUnder $25
Two hours if you pay, one if you are choosing what to see. The Egyptian galleries and The Dinner Party are the reasons to come; the building itself is the third. It is the second-largest art museum in the city with a fraction of the Met's crowd, which is the whole argument for putting it on a first-visit day.
Next door — the garden shares the block. Walk out of the museum and turn right.
Brooklyn Botanic GardenUnder $25
An hour. In April the cherry esplanade is one of the great sights in New York; the rest of the year it is a calm, well-made garden with a Japanese garden from 1915. Check the free-admission windows on the spot page — if you are here on the right weekday morning the whole afternoon costs nothing.
The garden backs onto the park. Exit toward Flatbush Avenue and you are in it.
Prospect ParkFree
The rest of the daylight. Walk the Long Meadow north to Grand Army Plaza, or the lake loop south. In summer the free concert series at the bandshell is the right way to end the day — check the schedule, bring food from the neighborhood, sit on the grass. The 2 or 3 at Grand Army Plaza takes you back to Manhattan in about thirty minutes.
Common questions
- Where does Williamsburg fit into this?
It doesn't, and that is deliberate. Williamsburg is on the L, a different line from everything on this plan, and it is a neighborhood for an evening rather than a stop on a sightseeing day. If you have a second day, the Williamsburg waterfront, Smorgasburg on a weekend and the Bushwick Collective murals make a good afternoon together. On one day, they cost you the park.
- Is it better to start in Brooklyn and walk the bridge back?
Only if you are staying in Brooklyn. Walking toward Manhattan puts the skyline in front of you, which people like for the view but which means walking into the sun in the morning and ending the walk in Lower Manhattan with the rest of the day behind you. Manhattan-to-Brooklyn in the morning gives you the whole borough ahead and nothing to backtrack.
- How much walking is this?
Around six miles across the day, most of it flat and most of it in parks. The bridge is a mile and a bit; the waterfront park is another mile end to end; Prospect Park is as much as you want. Nothing here needs a car or a taxi, and the only subway ride is the one in the middle.
Who should skip this
People who came to Brooklyn for the nightlife, the shopping or Williamsburg — this is a parks-and-museums day that finishes on a lawn, not a bar.