Olmsted and Vaux built Central Park first and Prospect Park second, and they thought the second one was better. This walk gives you both reasons it's loved: the brownstone slope above it, and the park itself, done in the morning before the crowds.
Start at Grand Army Plaza, under John Duncan's 1892 arch with its bronze chariot — the door to the whole thing. Step back into the slope first, the bow-fronted brownstone streets that name the neighbourhood, then come back and go in. The Long Meadow opens immediately: ninety acres of grass with nothing built in the sightline, exactly as Olmsted wanted it. Walk its length to the Ravine, the wooded heart and the only real forest in Brooklyn, with the Boathouse on the Lullwater below.
Come out on the east side, where the Brooklyn Museum and the Botanic Garden sit one after the other — the feminist wing in one, the cherry esplanade in the other. The cherries are April; everything else holds. The B/Q is a few steps on, and you've walked the better park.
