A Lovely New York Day for Under $100

Start at Caffe Reggio on MacDougal Street, where the price of an espresso rents you a marble table in one of the oldest café rooms in America. Linger. That is the entire assignment.

Then spend the rest of the morning on the Village itself, which charges nothing. Washington Square Park first — street musicians, chess players, the arch — then the little streets: Washington Mews, the bend of Gay Street, the hush of Grove Court through its gate. An hour of aimless walking here outperforms most paid tours.

Walk west to Chelsea Market and assemble lunch from its counters — tacos, lobster rolls, bánh mì, whatever the day suggests. A food-hall lunch is the budget traveler's best trick: real cooking, no table minimum, and people-watching included.

Then take the stairs up to the High Line and walk the old rail line south, free of charge, between the buildings and above the traffic. Where it ends, Little Island waits over the Hudson — also free — with lawns and overlooks that would cost admission in any other city. This whole stretch, market to island, is the proof of the day's thesis.

If you spend real money once today, spend it on a museum ticket. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the maximalist choice — five thousand years of art, and nobody has ever seen all of it. The Morgan Library is the connoisseur's alternative: J. P. Morgan's jewel-box study and a vaulted library that ranks among the most beautiful rooms in the city.

Prefer to keep the afternoon free instead? Ride the Roosevelt Island Tramway, which costs the same as a subway swipe and delivers an aerial view of the East Side skyline on its glide over the river. Round trip, it is the cheapest scenic flight in America.

Dinner on this budget means a neighborhood institution rather than a reservation war, and New York's are better than most cities' splurges. Veselka in the East Village serves Ukrainian comfort food — pierogi, borscht, challah French toast — in a room that has fed the neighborhood since the 1950s. Downtown, Nom Wah Tea Parlor on the bend of Doyers Street has been serving dim sum longer than any parlor in the city.

Either way, walk afterward. St. Marks Place and Tompkins Square Park extend the East Village evening; Doyers Street and Columbus Park do the same for Chinatown. Dinner in New York is half the meal and half the walk home.

End with the most expensive-looking thing you will do all day, which costs nothing: a sunset from the water's edge. Take the subway to Brooklyn and watch the skyline go gold from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, or ride out to Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City for the midtown version. Both are free. Both beat most rooftop bars.

That is the day: a couple of coffees, a market lunch, one museum ticket, dinner at a neighborhood spot, and a transit card doing quiet work in between. The remainder of your hundred is a tip jar and a pastry for the ride home. New York is an expensive city with a generous soul — you just have to know which one to spend time with.