A Day on the Upper East Side With Kids, Starting From East 62nd Street

The nice thing about doing the Upper East Side with kids is that you barely need the subway. From East 62nd Street, Central Park is about an eight-minute walk through the quiet blocks, and once you're in the park the biggest hits for small people, the Zoo and the carousel, are close to the 64th Street side. Museum Mile runs straight up Fifth Avenue from there, so the Met is a walk, not a train. This is a plan built for short legs and shorter attention spans: park first while everyone's fresh, a break in the middle, then one museum before the meltdown. Staying in an apartment does a lot of quiet work on a day like this. You've got a kitchen for a real breakfast and a fridge for snacks, so you're not buying a $6 juice every time someone gets cranky, and you can come back midday to nap and reset instead of powering through. If you're traveling with a baby, we keep pack 'n plays on hand for free, set up before you arrive.