BROOKLYN, N.Y. » At the end of the walk or bike ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s all about the view.

Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade above the park offer sweeping, spectacular views across the river, toward Manhattan. You can even see the Statue of Liberty in the harbor.

Brooklyn is New York’s most populated borough, with 2.5 million residents. While it doesn’t have the tourist allure of Manhattan’s Times Square, it has its own neighborhoods, restaurants and shops worth visiting.

You can take the subway, but many tourists visit Brooklyn by walking or biking across the bridge near City Hall Park.

A bicycle can easily be picked up from Citi Bike stands scattered around Manhattan and in Brooklyn near the bridge. The walk is a little more than a mile.

And when you reach Brooklyn, there’s ice cream and pizza.

The Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory is in a historic converted fireboat building near the Fulton Ferry Pier at the base of the bridge.

Just up Front Street is the famous Gri­maldi Pizza, with its coal-fired oven, and Juli­ana’s, the pizza parlor opened by the original owner, Patsy Gri­maldi, after he sold his first restaurant and lived to regret the decision.

If you want to do more exploring, walk over and ride the restored Jane’s Carousel, with its intricate horses and paintings, in the park.

To see the view from above, walk up to the Brooklyn Promenade, and if you have the energy, or you’re on a bike, explore the Brooklyn Heights and/or DOMA neighborhoods.

On a whim, I wanted to see more of Brooklyn and got on the subway to have borscht in Brighton Beach, where Rus­sian immigrants have created a Little Russia at the beach neighborhood near Coney Island. Rus­sian is spoken just as much as English here.

I visited Sko­vo­rodka at 615 Brighton Beach Ave., but many restaurants in the area serve the beet soup that is an Eastern European classic.

Since I was in Brighton Beach, I also walked the boardwalk in Coney Island and rode the Cyclone, the landmark wooden roller coaster built in 1927 and restored in 1975.

This is also where the annual Nathan’s Fourth of July hot dog eating contest is held. The original restaurant is not on the boardwalk; it’s about a block away on Surf Avenue.

In the evening I walked along Fifth Avenue in the Park Slope neighborhood, an upscale area of Brooklyn with many restaurants and shops.

I had the bone marrow and oxtail marmalade at the Blue Ribbon Bistro, the Brooklyn outlet of the more famous Blue Ribbon sushi and Blue Ribbon Bistro in Manhattan.

Farther down Fifth Avenue, toward Barclays Center, I stopped at Convivium Osteria on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope on the recommendation of a friend.

It features Italian, Portuguese and Spanish tapas and entrees. I just had enough room to taste a tender grilled baby octopus appetizer and a glass of Spanish wine, a delicious end to a day in Brooklyn.