A local’s guide to the best of New York City

There are countless ways to experience New York, from the lights of Times Square to the marshy wetlands of Jamaica Bay. Across them, there’s always something to see.

In America’s largest and densest city, free yourself from checklists and follow where your curiosity takes you instead.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art tops many visitors’ lists for its encyclopedic collection. It’s also an underrated performance venue: Look for events held in the galleries, such as site-responsive dance at the Temple of Dendur or a reverberating, eight-hour work of music by composer and Radiohead alum Jonny Greenwood – played on a nearly 200-year-old organ – in the Arms and Armor Court.

In the winter, soak up the interwoven voices of medieval polyphony in The Met Cloisters’ 12th-century Fuentidueña Chapel, located in the museum’s northern Manhattan offshoot. In the summer, there’s no venue as charming (or well-programmed) as the amphitheatre at Little Island, a lovely folly of a park that sprouts out into the Hudson River from Chelsea.

Height is one way to get a sense of New York’s scale, and anyone who heads to one of the city’s main observation decks – Empire State, Top of the Rock, Edge at Hudson Yards – will not leave disappointed.

Seeing Manhattan by water is even better: The free, municipal-orange Staten Island Ferry offers both visitors and commuters a leisurely drive-by of the Statue of Liberty. Boat trips to Governors Island, a former Coast Guard base that is slowly morphing into one of the city’s greatest parks, and Ellis Island, the foremost place to explore America’s immigration story, both offer their own takes on Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

But no view is as all-encompassing as The Panorama of the City of New York, a scale model of the entire city housed in the Queens Museum. The Panorama debuted as part of the 1964-65 World’s Fair, while the museum itself is housed in a building from the 1939-40 World’s Fair.

Polyglot Queens is New York City’s most delicious borough, but nothing quite beats Manhattan’s East Village in terms of “pure restaurant energy”. Fun and sophisticated Bar Snack is a superlative place to start or end a night with a daiquiri and spice bag. Superiority Burger continues to hold it down for best-in-class burger and fries.

At Kabawa, Chef Paul Carmichael serves up a tasting menu that also feels like a party. Time travel to the New York of yesteryear with all-night pierogi at Veselka, old-school Italian pastries at Veniero’s, and tiny glasses of ale at McSorley’s, where the floor is still covered in sawdust.

No matter the season, you can take the Metro-North up from Grand Central to the New York Botanical Garden for a whiff of something special. Its 250 acres of green space are an oasis of fresh air in a city sometimes lacking it.

Lilacs and roses, when they are in bloom, perfume the air with their floral scent. And once every five or so years, visitors may catch the Amorphophallus titanum – better known as the corpse flower for its distinctive odour of rotting meat – in bloom.

In winter, the most invigorating way to warm up is to lace your skates up tight and push out across the ice. The rinks at Rockefeller Center and Central Park are more famous, but Bryant Park is especially picturesque from November to March. You won’t get cold gliding in frictionless circles, but you may get pleasantly tired.

In the summer, do as New Yorkers do and head to the city’s glorious beaches. Let the wind whip your hair on the one-hour ferry from lower Manhattan to the Rockaways, where you can extend your stay at The Rockaway Hotel. On the shore, feel the sand, sun and salt water on your skin. Above all, soak up your very own version of New York.

For more information on Singapore Airlines’ flights to New York, visit singaporeair.com.