South Street Seaport Museum Hours and Tickets: Friday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 5pm. It's closed Monday through Thursday, and that's the part that trips people up, because the rest of the Seaport is open all week. If you're only here midweek, walk the piers and the plaza and skip the ticket.

One general admission covers the full campus. That's the 1885 tall ship Wavertree and the 1908 lightship Ambrose, both permanently moored at Pier 16, every exhibition on view in the first-floor Schermerhorn Row galleries at 12 Fulton Street, and Maritime City, the museum's three-floor exhibition inside the old A.A. Thomson & Co. building at 213 Water Street. Buy it on the museum's own site before you walk over. Bowne & Co., Stationers at 211 Water Street, the museum's nineteenth century style print shop and gift emporium, is free to walk into.

We'd budget an hour and a half for the whole thing, more if you read every label on the ships. Arriving at 11am is the move: it's the quietest end of the museum's short window, and it leaves the afternoon free. If it's raining, do Maritime City and the Schermerhorn Row galleries first and stay indoors. There are free hands-on activity stations for kids across the campus, and the museum also runs sailing programs in New York Harbor, which are booked separately from general admission.

We're at 17 John Street, a short walk inland from the Seaport, so you can do this on foot and be back before lunch. Fulton Street station, with several subway lines, is about three minutes from our door if you're carrying on somewhere else afterwards.