Good morning. Today, my colleague Elisabeth Goodridge has a guide for anyone visiting New York City in the coming year. We're also covering South Korea, ABC News and Nikki Giovanni. —David Leonhardt
Welcome to New York
It's prime Yuletide in New York City. The window displays at Bergdorf Goodman beckon. There's a new riverside ice rink in Williamsburg. Buildings, brownstones and bodegas across the city pop with decorations. A woman I saw holding court on the 6 train last week was accessorized with felt antlers, a gaudy Christmas sweater and three large dogs also wearing holiday sweaters. But the crowds these days, and oh, the prices! The cost of everything, from sandwiches to hotel rooms, has soared. And the city expects to get nearly 65 million visitors this year, this close to prepandemic levels. In recent days, it has felt as if all of those people are on the sidewalks of Midtown, furiously trying to elbow their way into Bryant Park's holiday market. In today's newsletter, I'm going to share eight tips for enjoying New York — whether you're visiting for the holidays or any other time of the year — without going broke or getting lost in the crowd.
1. The city that never sleeps tends to wake up late. Crowds are sparse in the early mornings across all the boroughs, even at the top tourist spots. So grab a bodega coffee and enjoy Rockefeller Center at 5 a.m., when the Christmas tree lights up daily, or walk across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise. 2. You need to book that table, reserve that slot, buy those tickets in advance. This is crucial for the must-do activities on your itinerary, including fine dining (here is The Times's list of New York City's 100 best restaurants), some Broadway shows and even visits to Santa at Macy's. You may pay less for off-peak times, or reservations might even be free, but you'll still need a reservation. 3. Otherwise, New York remains a frenetic place. For inspiration, look to our recently published 36 Hours columns on New York City and Brooklyn, or our locals' guide to celebrating the holidays. (A few suggestions from me: Walking is free and entertaining, and rooftop bars are still a thing, even in winter.) But remember to pace yourself. 4. And remember, there's more than Manhattan. For cold, gray days, visit offbeat museums like Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, or the New York Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn. Summertime could mean Governors Island for camping, taking in views of the Statue of Liberty and sliding down the city's longest slide. In the fall, the Queens County Farm Museum has one of the East Coast's best corn mazes. Oysters served curbside on Arthur Avenue are worth a trip to the Bronx, but so is the Bronx Zoo, City Island or the New York Botanical Garden. 5. You actually don't need to spend a ton. Free and sometimes-free museums abound. Check out newsletters like DoNYC and The Skint, which list free events, cheap tickets and discounts. Of course, New York also has the best pizza and bagels and other inexpensive eats. Our Frugal Traveler columnist, Elaine Glusac, recently explored New York on a budget; she walked the city and ate takeout, saw free art and found cheap theater tickets. 6. Don't be part of our congestion problem. Our traffic is the worst in the world (always No. 1!), so for all of the places you want to go, take the subway, unlock a Citi Bike, hop on a ferry or walk. 7. New Yorkers like to complain, but it's not all that bad. Yes, there are crowds. But it's still the greatest city in the world with countless reasons to visit. The last few years have seen more developed green spaces, more ferry routes and more e-bikes in the bike-share program. We have a new performing arts center, a new wing of an old friend, even a new island. 8. Enjoy our city of contradictions. We New Yorkers love to have you here. Just don't talk loudly, walk slowly, stop suddenly on the sidewalk or make direct eye contact on the subway. Feel free to ask for directions, however. We'll not only help with a smile, but probably show you the way.
South Korea
Politics
Syria
Other Big Stories
Does treating Luigi Mangione as a folk hero trivialize violence? Yes. It doesn't take long before one vigilante's act desensitizes us to violence in general, pushing our society on a path where cruelty becomes more common. "Every terrorist sees an avenging angel in the mirror," The Kansas City Star's Melinda Henneberger writes. No. Insurance agencies deny lifesaving treatment to patients every day, perpetuating inequality that causes harm. "Public anger at the system is, therefore, absolutely logical — you might even call it a preexisting condition," Al Jazeera's Belén Fernández writes.
Since the Menendez brothers' trial in the 1990s, Americans have come to understand that domestic abuse is torture. The justice system needs to do the same, Rachel Louise Snyder writes. Nicholas Kristof suggests a donation that can transform a life this holiday season. Here's a column by Ross Douthat on making pop culture great again. Ends soon: Our best rate on unlimited access for Morning readers. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
Bundling up: Our photographer strolled around Central Park to capture the festive and cozy attire of the season. Taylor Swift Poetry Quiz: Can you match the poem with the Swift song that inspired it? Most popular: The most clicked story in The Morning this week was about Selena Gomez's viral engagement ring. See it here. Festive fingertips: A nail artist shares a design you can recreate at home. Vows: Two Indian movie stars bonded over language. Lives Lived: Bob Fernandez was one of the last known American survivors of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He died at 100.
"The Serviceberry," by Robin Wall Kimmerer: Kimmerer's last book, "Braiding Sweetgrass," is a phenomenon. It has sold almost three million copies, been published in more than 20 languages and been on the Times best-seller list for 243 weeks (and counting) — all by showing us how to repair our relationship with the natural world. Now, in her latest best seller, Kimmerer helps us reframe our priorities using the abundant serviceberry as a guide. What is a serviceberry, you might wonder? It's a harbinger of spring, "the best of the berries," Kimmerer, a plant ecologist and member of the Potawatomi Nation, writes in this persuasive treatise about the supremacy of the natural world over the economic one. John Burgoyne's line drawings bolster her timely argument with a simplicity reminiscent of Garth Williams's illustrations in "Charlotte's Web." More on books
This week's subject for The Interview is the travel writer and PBS personality Rick Steves. We spoke about the transformational power of travel, which he still very much believes in despite a growing nativist sentiment around the world, as well as his recent cancer diagnosis. You've been very open about receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer. How are you doing? Well, thank you. I'm doing as well as you can be doing when you have prostate cancer. A month ago, I said goodbye to my prostate. I see it as a journey. I don't speak the language. The locals are friendly. I don't know exactly where it's going. I'm not in control of the itinerary. I want to tackle it with what I consider a traveler's mind-set. But it's scary at the same time. Has it given you more of an urgency to do things you haven't done before? No, but it gives me an awareness of what you might regret when you're wrapping up your life. You know, you think about that. What have been the sacrifices of being on the road so much? Because you have spent such a huge portion of your life going out elsewhere and discovering. There are regrets. It has not been good for my family. I got divorced. It has not been great for relationships with loved ones. It's a choice you have to make. You know, I would love to be the person I was before I was a travel writer. I would have had a very, very beautiful life being a piano teacher and coming home every night for dinner and mowing the lawn and joining clubs and being regular and reliable. But I've chosen a different path. It's a mission for me. And I don't spend a lot of time explaining to people why my values are the way they are, my priorities are the way they are. And in a way I'm sad about it, but again, you have to make a choice. Read more of the interview here.
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The holidays are upon us. We've got every recipe you need for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and more. See them here.
Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was nonchalance. Can you put eight historical events — including the invention of Schrödinger's cat, the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer and the creation of the waltz — in chronological order? Take this week's Flashback quiz. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.
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