From exploring hidden museums to enjoying lemon ricotta pancakes al fresco, Greenwich Hotel general manager Philip Truelove tells Life & Leisure about his perfect weekend in Lower Manhattan.

Saturday morning. We have a 13-year-old daughter and a dog called Oliver, so sleeping in is a rare luxury. I'm inside so much during the week that I just love to get out on weekends. I'll take Ollie on a walk from Brooklyn Heights, where we currently live, across the Brooklyn Bridge to Lower Manhattan, where I lived for many years. In summer, when the sun is shining, it's a tremendous walk.

Saturday brunch. If we feel like brunch, we'll walk up to The Greenwich, just north of the Financial District in Tribeca, and eat at Locanda Verde, which serves American dishes with an Italian twist. It's very much a neighbourhood restaurant – very buzzy and very busy. In the summer, you can sit outside on Greenwich Street, so you get a real feeling of Lower Manhattan. I'll order the lemon ricotta pancakes or the Locanda Verde version of French toast. While we're up in Tribeca, I might drop in to Philip Williams Posters, also known as the Poster Museum, which has thousands of original posters dating back to the 1870s.

Saturday afternoon. If I'm showing visitors around, I'll often take them to a couple of smaller, off-the-beaten-track museums in Lower Manhattan. The National Museum of the American Indian, which is a Smithsonian museum, is in the old customs house right down the end of Broadway, near the Charging Bull statue. And the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park City is a really cute little place that absolutely no one has heard of.

Saturday evening. Drinking and dining at the southern tip of Manhattan has become a really pleasant and lively experience. When I was living there it was dead as a dodo but there's a lot more going on now that they've converted so many of the old bank buildings around Wall Street into apartments. It's breathed life into some very historic drinking and dining spots, such as The Dead Rabbit, which is described as an untraditional Irish pub. Delmonico's is down there, too. It was the first restaurant in New York to have a printed menu, back in 1837.

Sunday morning. I'll quite often pop into The Greenwich on the weekends, not necessarily for the whole day but to see who's there and to say hello. The hotel is one block east of the Hudson River, so then I might walk beside the water down to Battery Park and right around the southern tip of Manhattan. It's a classic walk everyone should do at least once.

Sunday lunch. For lunch, there's a very upscale shopping centre at Battery Park by the yacht basin called Brookfield Place. I know what you're thinking: who wants another shopping centre? But this one has a very good food section called Hudson Eats that makes it worth a visit. It's a chef-driven collection of small restaurants – similar to Eataly but with American-style food. There's also a great cinema near Brookfield Place we visit quite often.

Sunday afternoon. From Brookfield Place, there's a tunnel running under the West Side Highway that connects you with the Trade Centre area where the memorials are. Nearby, too, is the Oculus, an extraordinary building with a lot of pure white marble. It's kind of ridiculous but also undeniably spectacular, and it needs to be seen. I do strongly recommend visiting the 9/11 Museum. It is a truly impressive place, albeit a hugely sad one. It's a difficult venue to visit for those of us who were in the area when the towers fell, but the team at the museum has done an incredible job. I, without question, take anyone who is visiting the city there out of respect for what happened.