Prospect Park

On our list of the best activities in New York.

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's design channels a system of pools and waterfalls into the 60-acre Lake, Brooklyn's only freshwater lake, while the nearly 150-acre Ravine holds the borough's only forest. The Long Meadow runs almost a mile without a break, the longest stretch of unbroken meadow in any U.S. urban park. Its Children's Corner clusters a zoo with close to 400 animals, a carousel moved from Coney Island in 1952, and Lefferts Historic House, an 18th-century Dutch farmhouse turned museum.