Day Trips from Manhattan

Leaving the island

New York City is five boroughs, and Manhattan is the smallest of them. The other four, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, have parks, beaches, museums and neighborhoods that most visitors never see, and all of them are reachable in less time than it takes to cross a large city elsewhere. Beyond the city, the Hudson Valley begins at its northern edge and runs up to Albany, and the train follows the river the whole way.

This page suggests four days off the island, each easy to reach by public transit, and each a real change of scene. None needs a car. Getting around covers the subway and the ferries, and itineraries shows where a day trip fits in a longer stay.

Dumbo and Brooklyn Bridge Park

The easiest day trip of all begins with a walk. Cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot from City Hall, and at the far end you come down into Dumbo, short for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. It was once a ferry landing and an industrial district of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century warehouses and cobbled streets of Belgian block, set against the huge stone anchorage of the Manhattan Bridge. Its buildings were bought up and remade late in the twentieth century, first as a haven for art galleries and now as a center for technology startups. The view of the Manhattan Bridge framed between the buildings on Washington Street, looking north from Water Street, is one of the most photographed in the city.

Below it lies Brooklyn Bridge Park, eighty-five acres of lawns, piers and playgrounds along the East River, stretching from Atlantic Avenue under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to Jay Street. Built on an old industrial waterfront, it opened in stages from 2010 and was finished in 2021. It includes the historic Fulton Ferry Landing, Jane's Carousel, built in 1922 and bought at auction in Ohio, and the old Empire Stores and Tobacco Warehouse, and from its piers the whole of Lower Manhattan rises across the water. Come back by NYC Ferry for the view from the river.

Coney Island

At the far southern end of Brooklyn, on the shore of Lower New York Bay, lies Coney Island, once a real island and now joined to the rest of Long Island by landfill. By the mid-nineteenth century it was a seaside resort, and by the end of the century its amusement parks were famous; the first roller coaster here, the Switchback Railway, opened in 1884. Its heyday was the first half of the twentieth century, when the Wonder Wheel opened in 1920, the Riegelmann Boardwalk in 1923, the Cyclone roller coaster in the 1920s and the Parachute Jump in 1941.

After a long decline, the area has revived since 2001, with a ballpark and new rides. It is still the place New Yorkers go for a day at the beach: a wide sandy shore, the boardwalk, the rides and a hot dog at Nathan's Famous, which Nathan Handwerker began selling here in 1916. The subway runs all the way there, and on a summer day the ride is part of the fun. The Lenape called the area Narrioch, which may mean land without shadows, a name that suits it on a bright afternoon.

The Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Garden

North of Manhattan, in Bronx Park, two of the city's great institutions stand side by side. The Bronx Zoo is one of the largest zoos in the country and the largest metropolitan zoo, with 265 acres of parkland and naturalistic habitats divided by the Bronx River. It opened in 1899, and its first buildings, the Astor Court, are a group of Beaux-Arts pavilions around a circular sea lion pool; its Rainey Memorial Gates were designed in 1934 by Paul Manship, the sculptor of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center. The zoo helped save the American bison from extinction in the early twentieth century.

Next door, the New York Botanical Garden, founded in 1891, covers 250 acres with more than a million living plants. Its centerpiece is the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, a great glass greenhouse holding several habitats, and it has one of the world's largest botanical libraries. More than a million people visit every year. The zoo and the garden together make a full day, and the Bronx is only a short ride north from Midtown.

The Hudson Valley

The most beautiful train ride from the city is Metro-North's Hudson Line. It leaves Grand Central and runs north along the east shore of the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie, on the route of the old Hudson River Railroad, with the water beside the tracks for much of the way. The valley beyond is the country of Washington Irving's tales of Sleepy Hollow and of the Hudson River School, the Romantic painters who worked here from about 1830 to 1870.

The easiest destination is Beacon, sixty miles north and about eighty minutes by train, where Dia Beacon stands a five-minute walk from the station. Opened in 2003 in a former Nabisco box-printing plant beside the river, it shows the Dia Art Foundation's collection of art from the 1960s to the present in some 240,000 square feet of galleries lit by more than 34,000 square feet of skylights, whose reflected north light suits the paintings. Combine it with a walk along the river and the town's main street, and take a seat on the river side of the train on the way up.

Planning a day out

Each of these trips fills most of a day. Leave in the morning, check the return times for Metro-North before you go, and carry what you need for the weather, since the waterfront and the beach are exposed. The zoo, the garden and Dia Beacon charge admission and keep their own days and hours, so check each one before you set out; the parks, the bridge and the beach are free.

If you have only one day to spare, walk the Brooklyn Bridge to Dumbo and Brooklyn Bridge Park: it needs no ticket, no timetable and no planning, and it gives you the finest view of Manhattan there is.