The Catbird Guide to NYC: A Walk From Williamsburg to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Just a few notes before you start:

• Total distance and time: The total distance of this walk is approximately 10 miles, or approximately a full day’s walk, depending on your pace and how long you linger at each stop.
• This is a self-guided walking tour of New York City, so you can move at your own pace and stop wherever inspiration strikes.
• Join in anywhere. Treat this like a NYC neighborhood guide you can pick up at any point along the route, whether you have an afternoon or a full day.
• Skip ahead when you need to. Hop on the L or G train, the East River ferry, a Citi Bike, or a Lyft to shorten a leg, cover more ground, or rest your feet between neighborhoods.

There is never a shortage of things to do in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a big, layered neighborhood that changes character from block to block. Walking end to end here can feel like moving between its past and its present, all in the space of a few avenues.  (Travel + Leisure, 2026)

Coffee and a Slow Start

But first, coffee and a treat. We love:

• Ants (Berry & Broadway). Practically at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, this is where Plessner's husband grabs a cappuccino before the family's regular bridge walks.
• Fortunato Bakery (Manhattan & Devoe). Plessner's own morning ritual is a table in the sun, a quick macchiato, and a mineral water, most days of the week. “I read for a few minutes every morning in between dropping my daughter at school and walking to our Brooklyn Navy Yard studio and office. It is a sacred place for me of quiet amongst the crowd. In the spring they have marzipan lambs, which is a cause for celebration.”

Leigh's favorites include:

• Stella Dallas (North 6th & Meeker). Two connected vintage stores carrying everything from thrifted T-shirts to dresses dating back to the 1840s, a stop Plessner calls very special.
• Le Grand Strip (Grand & Driggs). A staple of the neighborhood's independent shopping scene.
• Mother of Junk (Driggs & North 6th). Plessner is a regular here, sifting through midcentury glassware, old family photos, and beaded jewelry for pieces that have made their way back to style the Catbird stores themselves.   (Travel + Leisure, 2026)

The Catbird flagship (108 North 7th Street, just off Bedford). Top of the list for things to do in Brooklyn, and the place to start or add to a stacking ring collection, sit for a piercing, get zapped with a permanent jewelry bracelet (a trend we started here in this very store), or build a custom charm chain of your own.

Right upstairs, our Wedding Annex hosts engagement rings, wedding bands, and milestone ring appointments. Or, simply browse to gather inspiration for your dream ring.

Shopping for someone else? Our jewelry sets and personalized jewelry, from engraved bands to nameplate necklaces, make it easy to bring something home. For more ideas, see our guide to gifting jewelry.

• Le Crocodile (Wythe & North 11th). An upscale French bistro inside the Wythe Hotel, where Plessner orders the hot chocolate for two, served on a silver platter, and settles in with her daughter on a snowy afternoon.  (Travel + Leisure, 2026)
• Balera (Frost & Graham). It’s nearly impossible to pick NYC pizza favorites, but Balera’s thin and crispy pizzas are packed with flavor and rarely disappoint. At Balera, vinyl records, retro accents and a shimmering disco ball set a playful tone. (Michelin Guide)
• Gelateria Gentile (Wythe & North 1st). Fine Italian Gelato in a cute and quaint storefront, perfect to grab & go and to savor as you walk

Crossing the Williamsburg Bridge is the most practical way to get from Williamsburg to the Lower East Side, and it might be our favorite Brooklyn to Manhattan walk. Thousands of pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers make the same crossing every day, and walking it puts you on a direct path to your next destination.

At the center of the bridge, Plessner has said, “there is a calm as the water shimmers below,” and you feel like a small, willing part of a much bigger, wilder city. (Travel + Leisure, 2026) Graffiti and street art line the walkway, and the bridge's pink-red steel trusses make the whole crossing feel like a transportive journey, crossing into Manhattan.

If you would prefer a Brooklyn Bridge walk, that is a beautiful, slightly longer detour that rejoins this route further downtown. We recommend the Williamsburg bridge because it’s slightly less traveled among tourists and a great option for biking with a dedicated side for cyclists.

• Travel notes: it takes about 30 to 45 minutes to walk the bridge's 1.4-mile pedestrian path, depending on your pace.

Once you are across the bridge, you land in Chinatown, one of the most iconic neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan. There are plenty of things to do in Chinatown, along with lots of things to do in Lower Manhattan overall.

Things to Do in Chinatown & the Lower East Side

• Yu & Me Books (Mulberry & Mosco). New York City's first Asian American woman-owned bookstore and a favorite stop for a browse.
• Magic Jewelry (Elizabeth & Canal). Home to the neighborhood's aura photography, a fun detour if you want a souvenir that is more mood than object.
• Essex Market (Essex & Delancey) where Plessner stops for olives and appetizers to take home.
• Plessner's own version of this portion of the walk also includes a stop at the swan-shaped benches outside Nine Orchard. Take a well-deserved, picturesque rest here!

Nolita and SoHo blur into one long stretch of things to do in SoHo, from cobblestone side streets to some of the city's most beautiful green spaces and shopping.

Things to Do in Nolita & SoHo

• Elizabeth Street Garden (Elizabeth & Spring). A quiet, sculpture-filled pocket park worth sitting in for a while.

Cafes in Nolita & SoHo

• Balthazar Bakery (Spring & Crosby). For a coffee and croissant to carry with you, and a packet of butter cookies to give as a gift.
• Cafe Integral (Elizabeth & Kenmare). Fine Nicaraguan coffee served alongside the best homemade vegan horchata. Try the Horchata latte, hot or iced.

Places to Shop in Nolita & SoHo

• DS & Durga (Mulberry & Prince) and Santa Maria Novella (Lafayette & Jersey) for the fragrance-ophiles.
• For a longer stop, Plessner's own version of this portion includes lunch at Altro Paradiso or Sant Ambroeus and a stop at Simone Rocha to admire the beauty.

Catbird SoHo (253 Centre Street), is one of the jewelry stores in SoHo worth the stop, and one of the best jewelry stores in NYC for solid gold pieces made to wear every day, from engravable rings to everyday charms. Our store sits on a street in the Little Paris two-block micro-neighborhood, dotted with wine bars and places to shop.

Picking up a gift while you are in the neighborhood? Our jewelry sets, curated in twos and threes, are made for exactly that.

Union Square marks the quiet middle of this walk. It is worth timing your stop around the Union Square Greenmarket, open year round and filled with produce, flowers, and baked goods that make it easy to slow down for twenty minutes.

A few blocks north and east, the NYC Flower District along 28th Street is one of the last working wholesale flower blocks in the city, with buckets of blooms spilling onto the sidewalk well before most of Manhattan is awake. It is a good reminder that this walk, like this city, rewards an early start.

If you won’t make it to the Flower District in time for peak early morning browsing, we always love bodega flowers as an alternative - so much so that we even designed a charm in their honor. I like them slightly raggedy, says Plessner - I’m no professional! I have a vase to flower ratio that allows a dozen to stretch through my apartment. Playing with vase size and rose height helps one or two flowers here and there feel gestural.

Midtown is the fastest-moving stretch of this walk, and it does not need lingering over the way Williamsburg or SoHo do.

Things to do in Midtown Manhattan

• Koreatown for a luxurious scalp massage and a cup of matcha soft serve before continuing north.

Catbird at Rockefeller Center (15 W 49th St) is one of the jewelry stores in Midtown worth the stop, and one of the best jewelry stores in NYC for solid gold jewelry, gifts, and more. Stop in for a quick browse, or to sit for a piercing or ring appointment between activities.

Moving north of Midtown, let the walk slow back into itself through Central Park and snake along the Upper East Side. This is Plessner's own favorite kind of meander: neck swiveling, vaguely swanlike, at the pediments and festoons and building details of the townhouses and prewar buildings along the way. Duck into Zitomer's (though, to her lasting surprise, they still do not carry her beloved Youth Dew Bath Oil), pop into a gallery or two, and make time for at least one museum stop before the Met itself. We recommend The Frick, the Neue, MoMA…all of them!

If you love secondhand books, keep a running list the way Plessner does — hers includes Colette, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Nabokov, Rumer Godden, Capote, the Mitfords, Cocteau, Joseph Cornell, and Frank O'Hara — so any used bookstore you wander into uptown has a real chance of turning up a treasure.

The walk ends where founder Rony Vardi, Plessner's partner in Catbird, began her own love of New York. She has traced it back to childhood, first reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and then visiting in person with her parents. What she remembers most, by her own account, is the sheer scale of the building itself: the flower arrangement inside the entrance, the sound of visitors gathered on the wide stairway, and the colonnade of Greek sculpture that always felt a little ghostly.  (JCK, Catbird-x-met-museum-of-art).

The best thing about The Met is getting lost, says Plessner. The Temple of Dendur, always, but go where your heart calls. The museum is so sprawling, something new will call to you every time.