New York & The Hamptons

Seven nights, one drive, ninety miles. This is the shortest thing they sell and it is really a New York week with a Long Island tail, which is a perfectly good way to spend a week in America. Flights, car and hotels are arranged together from the UK.

Four nights in Manhattan come first, with no car at all, which is the right call: Central Park and the Met, the ferry out past the Statue of Liberty to Ellis Island, the 9/11 Memorial downtown, and midtown from the top of the Empire State or the Rockefeller Center at dusk. Zabar’s on the Upper West Side is the sort of place that tells you more about the city than most museums.

Then the car, and a single drive out to the eastern end of Long Island. Three nights in the Hamptons gives you Main Beach at East Hampton and Cooper’s Beach at Southampton, both regularly named among the best in the country, along with clapperboard villages and the Gardiner Windmill. Push on to Montauk at the very tip and there is Camp Hero, a decommissioned military base turned state park, and the dunes at Hither Hills.

Coney Island and the Gold Coast mansions can be worked into the drive out. Two stops, seven nights, and one day behind the wheel in the whole trip. The itinerary is bespoke, so nights can be shifted between the city and the coast, and departures are arranged around your dates. It suits anyone who wants New York with a beach at the end of it, and has no intention of driving across anything.