So I'm going to NYC in a couple of weeks...what to see?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I’ll be staying with friends in Sea Cliff, Long Island. I want to spend a day in the city. We’ll be taking the LIRR from Manhasset to Penn Station.

Here’s the background: My childhood friend (from New Orleans) moved to Long Island when he was about 10 to live with his mother. He married his high-school sweetheart, a native of Long Island. In around 2000 they moved back to New Orleans. Last May, they moved back to Long Island.

Their experience with NYC is mostly limited to stuff that teenagers/early 20s people like to do. We’re all in our mid-30s now. So as adults nearing middle-age, they don’t know exactly what to see down there either.

I went last May and we saw the southeastern part of Central Park, Rockefeller Center, The Empire State Building (not the top though…lines were too long). We walked portions of 5th and 6th Avenues from the Empire State Building to Central Park and then took a taxi down to Little Italy and walked to Chinatown. They had a vague idea of where we were going, and just the awe of being in such a large city was plenty of excitement for me.

I mapped it out and I think we covered about 8 miles on foot, so walking long distances isn’t an issue for any of us.

I have a few ideas of seeing more of Central Park, getting my picture taken in front of Tom’s Diner and maybe in front of Jerry Seinfeld’s old apartment on W. 81st Street.

Is it worth it to ride the subways, just so I can say I rode the subway? Is it safe to ride the subways, or will they be full of street-people during the wintertime?

From my last trip up there, it’s evident that the 1990s Law & Order image of New York City is long gone. I was surprised at how clean everything seemed to be and the lack of street people. Is it like that everywhere or did we just go to all the right places?

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It’s worth it to ride the subways to actually get places; cheaper than taxis, convenient to almost anywhere, and I’ve never felt unsafe or hassled.

Stuff you haven’t mentioned, but should consider:

Museums (Metropolitan, Modern Art, Natural History)
Theater[sup]*[/sup] (Broadway, Off-Broadway, etc.)
Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island

  • I may be planning a trip sometime soon to see Avenue Q.
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The subway is clean, fast and efficient. Occasionally there will be a homeless person on the subway but generally speaking they leave you alone. It sounds like you get your images of NYC from late 70’s and early 80’s movies or generic crime shows. I promise you the city is clean and safe (and in fact has a lower per captia crime rate than many other places in the US.)

Go to the theater while you are here. There are lots of shows, ranging from classics like Guys and Dolls or West Side Story to more modern things like Ave Q and Shrek the Musical. The theater here is amazing and should not be missed if you can help it.

If you want museums the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History are enormous and promise to be an entertaining way to spend the day. The Cloisters or the Guggenheim are smaller and have a more limited range of exhibits but they tend to house different kinds of art than you would see elsewhere.