A Romantic Weekend in Lower Manhattan: Two Nights, Written by People Who Live Down Here
By 17John ·
Quick answer
The most romantic things to do in Lower Manhattan are the ones that use the water and the quiet: the free Staten Island Ferry at golden hour, a drink 64 floors up at Overstory on Pine Street, dinner on the cobblestones of Stone Street, and the Brooklyn Bridge walk early on a Sunday before the crowd arrives. This two-night plan strings them together on foot from 17 John Street, with a Broadway night in the middle for anyone marking an anniversary. Nothing here needs a car and most of it needs no ticket.
We get a lot of anniversary bookings. Twentieth, twenty-fifth, the occasional first. People usually arrive with a Broadway ticket and a dinner reservation and a gap in the middle they're not sure what to do with, and they're often surprised that the good part of the weekend turns out to be the walking.
Lower Manhattan is the oldest, strangest-shaped part of the city. The streets bend, the buildings are close, and then you turn a corner and the harbor is right there. On weekends the office crowd is gone and it gets quiet in a way Midtown never does. That's the whole case for doing a romantic weekend down here instead of up there: you can hold a conversation on the sidewalk.
This is a two-night plan, Friday evening through Sunday lunch, built around walking distance from our door on John Street. Take the parts you like. The times are suggestions, not a schedule.
Friday: arrive, get high up, eat on the cobblestones
