I need some help figuring out a good place to stay in New Jersey near the PATH train.
My sister and her brood are going to visit New York for four days. What they are hoping to do is find a reasonable hotel/motel somewhere in New Jersy and take the Path train into the city. My sister really, really doesn’t want to drive in Manhattan so this seem like a sensible approach.
Does anyone have expercience with this? Inexpensive hotels or motels around Newark, Jersey City or Hoboken? Even information on parking around the PATH stations would be helpful. Actually, any suggestions at all would be helpful.
[nonresponsive]She doesn’t want to stay or park her car in downtown Newark. I think Jersey City Harborside/Newport has some moderate hotels from recent web searches.
But she might be pleasantly surprised at the price of Manhattan hotels, including pretty nice ones, these days. Do a quick Expedia search – I just did a trial run and found three star hotels in Midtown Manhattan starting at $139 a night.
There are too many of them for one room, so that’s one more reason for New Jersey. They only need the rooms for sleep so Econolodges and Super 8’s are fine.
We’ve looked at Expedia but I’m hoping someone else has done this and can help with parking tips around PATH stations or alternate places to stay and/or ways into the city.
I’ve done this, but it was because my husband’s brother lived in New Jersey, so we stayed with him and didn’t have to deal with the hotel aspect. He also drove us to the train station, so we didn’t have to deal with parking either. He drove us to the New Brunswick station and we took the NJ Transit train into the city. Kind of a long ride, but it was fun. I’m looking forward to having trains like that in the Twin Cities.
Other than the PATH, you can take a NJ Transit train or bus into the city. You can get into Manhattan from the main train hub in Secaucus in about ten minutes. I know that there are plenty of hotels in the Secaucus/Meadowlands area, but I am not sure about their prices or how easy it would be to get to the train station or a bus stop without a car.
Oops, upon closer inspection, I see that you will have a car. There are two aspects when it comes to parking in the Secaucus train station. Because Secaucus mainly functions as a transfer hub, most of the riders would not be utilizing the parking area. On the other hand, however, NJ Transit realized this when they designed the station and purposely didn’t make too many parking spaces. I’m fairly certain that it will be easy to find parking there, but you’d have to do some research beforehand.
I looked at Embassy Suites in Manhattan (suites being the key point, as you can fit extra people) and found near-term availability for $219/nt.
If you look at the PATH maps, you’ll see that most of the stations even in N.J. are in fairly densely populated downtown areas, which is going to make parking (esp. free safe on street parking) kind of tough.
I have done exactly what you’ve described, though, so it’s doable – visiting N.Y. when younger/poorer, found a motel right by one of the tunnels (N.B. – these are mostly scroungy to more than sketchy) and took bus/train into the City. The transit does take out of sightseeing time, just as my misguided attempts to save money by staying east of Greenwich did while visiting London.
When my Aunt visits Manhattan she stays in Secaucus, and has no problem parking at the train station there. According to her, however, there are some nasty hotels so don’t be too cheap.
You think I’d be a bit more helpful than this, considering my train stops at Secaucus every morning on the way to work. It’s only 10 minutes from there to Penn Station. Both NJ Transit and PATH are pretty reliable, easy ways into NYC.