New York Below 24th Street

Everything good in Manhattan happens below 24th Street. People who come home from New York not quite seeing what the fuss was about have usually been sleeping in Midtown or Hell's Kitchen, and it is hard to blame them when nobody told them otherwise. Downtown means the Villages and the streets south and east of them as far as Chinatown, with Chelsea let in at a push. Uptown has the park and the museums, the Met among them, and they are worth the trip so long as it stays a trip, with a bed to come back down to. The rest of the answer is across the East River, in Brooklyn, and in Williamsburg above all.

We lived there for three years before we had children, first on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, then on Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg, and made some of the best friends of our lives. Of every city we have lived in it was the friendliest, London included. The lonely New York people describe never turned up: so many of the people in it came from somewhere else that they make room for whoever arrives next. Both streets come back below: three of the five hotels are on Wythe Avenue, at 80, 96 and 97.

The Lower East Side and the Bowery

The Bowery was skid row within living memory, and The Bowery Hotel, which opened in 2007, is credited with helping turn it into a street people set out for. Its owners, Sean MacPherson and Eric Goode, stripped an old building back to its frame and hung a brick-and-glass front on it, in the manner that gets called factory Gothic. Inside, the Oushak carpets and velvet curtains look a good deal older than the hotel. Katz's Delicatessen is a short walk away: near enough for the pastrami, far enough to walk some of it back.

For a drink with a view, Mr. Purple is a rooftop bar on the 15th floor at 180 Orchard Street, opened in November 2015. It made the list of rooftops we wrote out for a friend, and the street it looks down on is Orchard, which for a while was ours. Russ & Daughters has sold smoked salmon from the same shop on East Houston Street since 1920, and a bagel from there is the breakfast to walk out for. Further east, in Alphabet City, Sake Bar Satsko is a Japanese sake bar so tiny its small plates have no right to be as good as they are.

Williamsburg

The Wythe Hotel, at 80 Wythe Avenue, was built in 1901 as a cooperage and later made textiles. Since 2012 it has been 72 rooms under the original pine beams, and the beds and desks are built from the factory's own salvaged wood. Le Crocodile, a French brasserie, serves all day inside, and Bar Blondeau has the roof, which went on our list too.

The Hoxton at 97 was the brand's first in the United States, and many of its 175 rooms look across the river at Manhattan. Laser Wolf, Michael Solomonov's Israeli grill house, faces the same skyline from the roof, and K'Far, an Israeli kitchen open all day, has the lobby. The L train is five minutes' walk, for the evenings Manhattan wins.

Arlo Williamsburg, at 96, was The Williamsburg Hotel when we stayed, and the Water Tower Bar came through the change of name: 136 feet up, in charred timber and steel, a nod to the water towers that once stood all over Williamsburg. The new name has brought a rooftop pool deck with it.

The William Vale, on North 12th Street, a few steps from McCarren Park and the river, is the other one we stayed in. Every one of its 183 rooms has a balcony, and Westlight, on the roof, is another from our list. The 60-foot outdoor lap pool is said to be the longest hotel pool in New York, a record in the one direction the city has never much cared about.

Book Lilia, on Union Avenue at North 10th Street, for Missy Robbins's pasta, which is reason enough on its own. Roberta's, out in Bushwick, makes what we rated the best pizza in Brooklyn. Park Slope and Carroll Gardens are further afield, each with a personality of its own, and in Brooklyn every neighbourhood seems a little hipper than the last.

The waterfront and the bridges

Walk the waterfront round the southern half of Manhattan, or take a Citi Bike and cycle it: of everything to do in New York, it is the one that never wears off. Cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot and keep the Williamsburg Bridge for the bike. On the Brooklyn side, Domino Park is six acres of East River shore on the site of the old Domino Sugar Refinery, open to the public for the first time in more than 160 years, its walkway held up on columns kept from the refinery's Raw Sugar Warehouse. Ride over the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan as the light goes, and Midtown is off to the right, lit up and at a sensible distance.