Visiting Central Park for the first time!

Welcome to Central Park – the most famous park in the whole world! It is composed of nearly 840 acres of nature, beauty, and serenity. We are about to give you 10 tips and tricks to make your first visit even more memorable. Enjoy!

1. Central Park is huge! It’s not the biggest park in New York, but you’ll need way more than a day or two to see it all. And it has a lot to offer - meadows, lakes, zoo animals, wildlife animals, even a castle! And that’s just a portion of it.

2. There are EIGHT subway stations just at the borders of the park - 59th Street Columbus Circle, 72nd Street, 81st Street (at the AMNH), 86th, 96th, 103rd, 110th Cathedral Parkway, 110 Street Station Central Park North,

3. It was featured in countless movies! Nearly all of the movies, that take place in New York, have scenes, filmed in Central Park - from the action-packed “Avengers” and “Spider-Man”, to more romantic movies, like  “Serendipity” and “When Harry Met Sally”, to extreme fun like “A Night in the Museum”.

4. It borders two of the world’s top museums - yes, the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are very close by. Where you want to take a detour, have some rest in the colder months, or use them as a starting/ending point of your visit - you can never go wrong with AMNH and The Met!

5. Central Park fields 27 public playgrounds, fitted for kids of all ages. Most of them have equipment for children with disabilities. The best that you can visit are the Heckscher Playground, the Ancient Playground, Robert Bendheim Playground.

6. There are a lot of ways to take your Central Park tour. The best one is a bike tour, but a walking tour and a pedicab tour are not to be missed. The bike one gives you the opportunity to go wherever you like, while the pedicab allows you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the park.

7. Being in the heart of Manhattan, Central Park neighbors some of the best restaurants in New York. The Loeb Boathouse and Tavern on the Green are Central Park icons and a must visit, yet there are several shiny jewel, worth visiting. Roof Garden Café and Martini Bar, Harry Cipriani, American Art Café are just a very small portion of the top-notch places that you must visit. There are several smaller, cheaper venues, offering fast, yet tasty (and healthy!) food, that are worth it. And if you get unexpectedly hungry, there are numerous snack carts all over Central Park.

8. Central Park is a sports haven. You can jog or cycle on the Mall, play some football/soccer on the large lawn or softball. Heckscher Field is probably the most popular baseball field on the park. Winter has the Wollman Rink to offer. And do you know that you can meet two ghosts there?

9. You can pay homage to John Lennon on the Strawberry fields (forever!). He and Yoko Ono live very close by – at the Dakota Apartments. He was shot just outside his home. The Strawberry fields memorial is a gathering point of Beatles’ fans, who often place flowers and other gifts for their favorite Beatle.

10. There are a lot of free, amazing things to do, while visiting Central Park. We’ve mentioned some of them, yet a couple more worth mentioning are SummerStage, Shakespeare in the Park.

Central Park is amazing in every single season – you can enjoy the blooming cherry threes of Cherry Hill or the Conservatory garden in spring, sit next to a lake in summer, have a picnic on the lawns or go see the Pumpkin Flotilla on Halloween in fall, or go skating on the Wollman Rink in winter. All this is what brings nearly 40 million people every year to the park – both locals and guest.