Check out any travel guide, either in print or online, and you’re likely to find some sort of suggested walking tour. Rick Steves is particularly good at coming up with these.

So consider this blog post my contribution to the effort. It may come in handy for anyone who is visiting New York.

My wife, Mary Pat, and I just spent a week in the city visiting our family members who live in Brooklyn. Because they were all either working or in school during the weekdays, we spent a couple of nights in Manhattan visiting our longtime friends Karen and Allen.

Many people I know come to New York to see theater. And I have done so in past visits, most recently in 2019 when Mary Pat scored tickets to the Aaron Sorkin stage-play rewrite of Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” (the final night of Jeff Daniels’ portrayal of Atticus Finch, in fact).

I, however, prefer to hang with my daughter and grandchildren, hit bookstores (such as Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore), visit museums, eat the country’s best pizza, seek out good coffee and simply take long walks and people-watch. I’ve done the last while touring the length and breadth of Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park.

But Monday a week ago we spent a sunny day walking around Manhattan, and this was our itinerary:

– We booked a room at the Pod 39 Hotel in the Murray Hill neighborhood, which provided us with the smallest room I’ve stayed in outside of a hotel we squeezed into several years ago in Tokyo. But it was just a few blocks walk to the 39th St. ferry terminal, from which we traveled to the Wall Street Ferry Terminal – in the process passing under the scenic and historic Brooklyn Bridge.

– Once we disembarked, one of the first sites we encountered was the Queen Elizabeth September 11th Garden. From the NYC Parks website: “This garden was commissioned by the British Memorial Garden Trust and given to the City in memory of the 67 British and Commonwealth citizens who died on Sept. 11, 2001.”

– We passed by Stone Street, which dates back to 1658 and was New York’s first paved street. It was designated a NYC historical site in 1996.

– Our route took us next past the New York Stock Exchange, which has been featured in any number of movies, from “Trading Places” to “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Not wanting to do anything that might crater my 401K, we didn’t try to break in. And we would have had to do so since it’s not  open to the public.

– We did, however, visit the Federal Hall National Monument, the place where George Washington took the oath of office as the first U.S. president. Set up with displays that explain the history and significance of the place, the hall fulfills its self-description as the “Birthplace of American Government.”

– And then because my wife is a lawyer, we of course had to stop by Trinity Church. Why? Because it’s where Alexander Hamilton, and his wife Elizabeth Schuyuler Hamilton, are buried. Interred nearby, too, are the likes of Robert Fulton, John James Audubon and John Jacob Astor.

– Our next stop was the 9/11 Memorial, which commemorates both the 2001 attacks that killed 2,977 people and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six. We took photos by the reflecting pools where the Twin Towers once stood, but we bypassed the museum because of the crowds. That’s a part of the travel experience, though: You always have to leave something undone so you’ll one day return.

– We did make a stop at the nearby “large white building with steel, wing-shaped tips reaching toward the sky,” which is how the impressive Oculus describes itself. A transportation hub designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava as part of the city’s plan to rebuild the World Trade Center, it took a dozen years to complete (at a cost exceeding some $4 billion) before opening in 2016.

– We stopped for lunch at P.J. Clarke’s, which I can attest serves the best clam chowder (the creamy New England kind) that I’ve ever tasted. And afterward, Karen and I ordered coffee at Olive’s (macchiato for her, americano for me).

–  If the 9/11 Memorial was humbling, then so was the Irish Hunger Memorial. Built to commemorate the more than 1 million souls who died in Ireland between 1845 and 1852, the memorial actually predates the events of 9/11 by six months and was completed on July 16, 2002. Its landscape comprises soil and vegetation taken from the western coast of Ireland, and it features stones from every Irish county.

– Finally, we walked through an intriguing outdoor art display known popularly as Penny Park. It's an area highlighted by what are known as “The Real World Sculptures” by the artist Tom Otterness. An eclectic mix of bronze shapes and sizes, it features animals in various poses that can be both cheery and gloomy at once – depending on your perspective.

And that’s it, unless you want to add in the grandeur of Grand Central Station that we visited in late afternoon while cabbing back to Pod 39. We had to stop there, of course, seeing as it’s been the shooting site of dozens of movies, from “Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town” to “John Wick: Chapter 3.”

Anyway, it was enough for us to see in one day. I think Rick Steves would approve.