Brooklyn Heights was the city's first suburb, and it still behaves like one: leafy, low, turned away from the traffic and towards the water. Three kilometres of brownstone lanes that end at the best free view in New York.
Start at Borough Hall and walk west off Cadman Plaza, down Montague Street with its shops and its slope to the river. Then turn into the quiet — Willow, Cranberry, Pineapple, the fruit-named lanes where the wood-frame houses predate the bridge and the wisteria does as it pleases. There's no route to follow here; just drift, because every block is the same kind of good.
The lanes deliver you to the Promenade, the cantilevered walk hung out over the expressway. Lower Manhattan stands across the harbour, and at sunset the whole thing lights up and the water turns. Stay for it.
Then drop down to Brooklyn Bridge Park and Pier 1, where the lawns meet the river and the bridge hangs overhead. End back up the hill at Clark Street — the platform's under an old hotel, reached by lift, one stop under the water and home.
