Photo: Rhododendrites , CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Every week, someone books a hotel "in New York" that turns out to be a shuttle ride from an airport runway, and their whole trip inherits the mistake. Where you sleep in this city shapes everything: what you see out the window, where you eat breakfast, how much of your vacation you spend underground on the subway. The good news is that there's no single right answer — there's a right answer for you. Let's find it. First trip? Stay central, but not that central Midtown makes sense for first-timers: you can walk to Times Square, Broadway theaters, Rockefeller Center, and Central Park, and every train line in creation passes underneath. The trade-off is soul. Much of Midtown empties after office hours and the blocks immediately around Times Square never stop being Times Square. My compromise pick: stay south of the chaos, in the 20s and 30s — NoMad, Flatiron, Chelsea. You're fifteen minutes from ev...
Mid-June is one of the best times to be in New York City. The days are long, the parks are green, rooftop season is in full swing, and the summer festival calendar is just getting started — all before the heavy heat and humidity of late July settle in. If you have a weekend to spare, the city rewards you with a near-endless list of things to do, both free and splurge-worthy. Here's how we'd spend a perfect summer weekend in NYC right now, from a Friday-evening arrival to a lazy Sunday wind-down. Friday evening: ease into the city Start slow. Drop your bags and head for the High Line, the elevated park built on a former rail line that runs through Chelsea and the Meatpacking District. In June the plantings are lush and the early-evening light over the Hudson is hard to beat. From there it's a short walk to Little Island, the floating park at Pier 55, where you can catch the breeze off the river. Cap the night at a rooftop bar — the area around the Standard and along the...