The wife and I are starting to make plans for the month of April 2012 – next year, not this year. We want to take the entire month off and finally see New York City, followed by a stay in our beloved Hawaii. She’s always wanted to visit NYC, and I’ve never been east of the Mississippi River, except for the Newark, New Jersey airport to and from Europe.
So since neither of us have ever set foot there, what would be a good amount of time to spend to do the tourist thing? We have friends in Connecticut and Boston who will almost certainly come in to meet us, but we’ll have most of the time on our own, I’m sure. Originally, we had planned to spend the entire month in Hawaii but have finally decided we should see NYC at least once, as we’re not getting any younger.
And NYC certainly won’t be getting any cheaper. That leads to my next question. I think I’ve read hotel prices there average $250 a night. Naturally with Hawaii stretching in front of us for most of the month, we’d like to keep the NYC price down. In Hawaii, we already know we’ll have a nice homey place to stay. For NYC, we wouldn’t mind if a hotel is bare bones, as we certainly don’t intend to spend much time in the room. Just a place to shower and flop at night. Is staying outside the city but close to mass transit a good option? Any recommended places? (Yes, I’ve seen that thread about the hotel named the worst in America for several years running and no thank you.)
Don’t stay outside the city and use mass transit. Very bad idea. Get a hotel in Mid-town, close to a subway stop, preferably in the theater district. You can get good ones for under $230.
The thing is, a typical day in NYC for a tourist is:
breakfast
back to the room to brush teeth (and other bathroom activities), change shoes
out for the day.
back in the afternoon to the hotel for a drink, rest, change of clothes
out for dinner, show or a club
back to the hotel
Try doing that from a hotel in the Meadowlands.
Sounds like you have some bucks, don’t ruin your stay in NYC by trying to save a few of them.
New York is the world’s great walking city. If you want to go somewhere specific, take the subway, but otherwise just choose a direction and start marching. You’ll always find something to see.
PATH is quick & frequent enough, and NJT trains run from Secaucus to Penn Station pretty much every 5 minutes during the day that if you find a good deal on a hotel in Jersey, you’d be hard pressed to do better than that.
Obviously if you can find cheaper hotels in NYC, it’s preferable to sleeping in Jersey, and obviously if you can blow hundreds of dollars a night to visit NYC you should do that too - but many people don’t have that option.
Also, keep in mind, NYC festers with bedbugs. Choosing some discount joint in the City as opposed to a more scrupulous hotel run by a national chain in Jersey may not be worth it just so you can go back to your hotel 5 times in a day via a 20 minute subway trip as opposed to a 30 minute PATH/NJT trip.
OP: I don’t actually know of any hotels in either area (esp. secaucus - it’s not really close to anything) that I could recommend though, sorry. Just poke around on kayak.
You can also try vrbo.com if you’re going to stay more than a couple days.
If you stay in New Jersey, make sure you are directly on a PATH station, and not out by Newark airport or linked only by NJ Transit. It’s an okay option if you are willing to forgo being able to stop back at your hotel during the day.
Also be careful, that you can be an hour away from Manhattan, and still be in New York City. Don’t stay in any airport hotels, or basically anywhere in Queens. In Brooklyn, stick to Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn/Metrotech, and maybe Carrol Gardens or Park Slope.
Definitely stay in the City. To do a lot of the touristy stuff, I would expect a minimum of 5 days. While it would be difficult to make a reservation over a year in advance. Here’s a low frills mid-town hotel that is currently booking in April 2011 for about $240 a night: http://www.clubquarters.com/loc_nyrockefellercenter.aspx It’s right across the street from Rockefeller Center.
It’s kind of buried in Wilbos post, but if you could only consider one observation deck type event, I would think hard about “Top of the Rock” on his list (i.e. the deck on the GE/NBC Building) over the Empire State.
Why? If you go up to the ESB, you’re going to get panoramic pictures of NYC without the Empire State Building in it!
We always stay in Tarrytown and take a train into the city. It’s about 45 minutes both ways, which doesn’t bother us a bit!
The best thing about New York to me is Central Park…it’s beautiful, peaceful, and entertaining. I hope you also get a chance to take in a Broadway show. Do the TKTS route as Wilbo suggests.
I vote for staying in the city. Even when we lived in Princeton, convenient to the train, we’d get a room in the city for a night or two to see shows and museums. With only a few days, every minute counts, and spending a lot of them on trains is not useful.
Wilbo has a good list, but I’d advise that if you want to see a show go to the TKTS booth near South Street Seaport instead of the one in Duffy Square. We did that a few weeks ago, and got tickets for “Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson” with no line. It opens earlier, which is a plus. You can see Ground Zero and South Sea Seaport while there, then take the subway up to midtown.
If you want to use the Duffy Square booth, there is a $.99 TKTS app for the Droid (and I assume iPhone too) which tells you what is available, but it doesn’t reload until way after the South Street Seaport booth is open.
My personal choices, as an old New Yorker
Empire State Building, but only if the weather is clear
Museum of your choice.
United Nations. A nice tour is offered, and you’ll probably get to see lots of chambers you’ve read about.
Broadway shows.
And definitely delis, since New York deli food at a place like the Stage is the best in the world, and trust me, I’ve checked this out.
If you are the gambling type, you can bypass the TKTS booth and try to win a ticket through the lottery system that many Broadway shows have. An hour before showtime, plays draw names for a chance to win a limited number of 1st and 2nd row seats for rockbottom prices.l Think $25 each. That’s how a friend of mine sees American Idiot on a very regular basis.
Also, April is cherry blossom time at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden! The garden is absolutely beautiful, easy to access by a few trains and right next to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The museum isn’t as popular or expansive as a lot of museums in Manhattan, but it does have great exhibits and is rarely crowded even on a weekend.
I took a solo trip to NYC this past April and stayed in Club Quarters on West 53rd (or is it 51st?), just across from Radio City Music Hall and half a block from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I actually don’t know exactly how much I paid for the room, but I booked the trip through travelocity and paid $1150 for air fare, hotel (four nights), and airport limo to/from Newark Airport.
I was familiar with NYC because I used to live nearby, so I already knew how to get bargain theater tickets (TKTS in Times Square), and I skipped some of the touristy things because I’d done them before. I saw three Broadway shows, went to Ground Zero (walked the entire way!!), went to a movie at the Sunshine Theater in Greenwich Village, ate at the nearby Whole Foods, shopped at the Strand Bookstore, and so on. I wanted to go to the Sex Museum but didn’t make it. I did walk into the UN but got there too late for a tour, or the tour I wanted was over, or something. I will say that based on what I saw of the UN I’m not sure I’d bother visiting it.
April is a beautiful time to go. Central Park was breathtaking, and except for one cold, rainy day, the weather was gorgeous.
By the way the website www.onnyturf.com overlays the subway map onto the google street map. Very handy because the official subway map is NOT to scale and does not show streets.
Hopstop.com is also helpful for combination public transit/walking directions.
NYC is such a boring town – nothing to do, and everything closes up by 6 p.m.
…okay, I’m kidding. New York City’s amazing, you’ll never run out of things to do, even if you live there. Do the tourist stuff, catch a play and/or ball game, and for heaven’s sake don’t skip the deli carts – that’s the heart and soul of the city right there!
Readers go even deeper for the cheap, Going deep for the cheap, and the NYC weekend for $100 all by the Frugal Traveler of the NYTimes are excellent starting places. You can find a hotel for under $200/night in a desirable Midtown location if you do your homework. I also say “stay close to where you wanna be”. I’ve stayed in Jersey, 5 minutes walking from a 45 min easily accessible bus (I forget where, it was 5 years ago) but you have to be young and with lots of energy and the knowledge you can never take a midday nap from all the walking. I wouldn’t do it again and I sure as heck wouldn’t have my mid 50’s mom do it.
We see what the best features of Fort Lee are. And anyone saying it is a few minute drive from the other side of the GWB to the Empire State Building either has only done it at 3 am or is talking out of their ass. Not to mention you wouldn’t want to drive there anyhow.
As for buses, I’d rather spend 40 minutes in a museum or my room than on a bus crawling through Manhattan. I’m also not sure I’d want to hang out in the Port Authority Bus Terminal after a show gets out. Ugh.
I like New Jersey, by the way. Just not Fort Lee.
New York City’s amazing, you’ll never run out of things to do, even if you live there. Do the tourist stuff, catch a play and/or ball game, and for heaven’s sake don’t skip the deli carts – that’s the heart and soul of the city right there!
And anyone saying it is a few minute drive from the other side of the GWB to the Empire State Building either has only done it at 3 am or is talking out of their ass. Not to mention you wouldn’t want to drive there anyhow.