Statue of Liberty tours need reservations, and there is tight security. Neither is the case for the ferry, which is real cheap, i.e. free.
I’ve done two Circle Kine tours, and they are meh. New York’s interesting buildings mostly don’t face the water, with the UN being the exception.
Best view I’ve had from a ship is when we took the QE2 to France, leaving NY down the Hudson. The deck is high enough that ypu can see down the canyons of the streets. Spectacular. (But a bit pricey.) The same view inspired Fritz Lang to do Metropolis.
Another option is the NY Waterway Skyline Harbor Cruise ($43). Although if you don’t want to pay $43, you can just take the regular NY Waterway commuter ferry from Pier 11/Wall Street to Port Imperial, NJ and back for $13 (without the historical commentary).
I don’t know if going out to the Statue of Liberty is really an efficient use of limited time in NYC. Lines to get tickets, lines to get on the boat, which might be long enough that the boat might fill up and you have to wait for the next boat. Then, you have to wait in line to get into the pedestal, and get in line again if you want to climb to the head. There are a lot of security measures as well, and sometimes full access isn’t available. If you really want to go to Liberty Island and/or Ellis Island, it’s a lot easier to catch the boat from Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
Frankly, the island and the exhibits in the interior of the statue aren’t that memorable. The best way to bet good look at the Statue is from the Staten Island Ferry (free!). There’s also The Circle Line, NYC Water Taxi, and NY Waterway boats.
And after spending the afternoon at Coney Island, have dinner in Brighton Beach aka Little Odessa. The restaurants there are exactly like eating in Moscow or Leningrad, except they actually have everything that they list on the menu. It’s a cool experience.
NOTE: Info on Brighton Beach is 20 years old, but I have no reason to think anything has changed. Info on Moscow and Leningrad is 35 years old, and I know everything has changed.
If you are planning to hit a lot of the major museums and tourist attractions, you might want to look at something like CityPass.
Talking about the major museums….I’m a museum dawdler, so the really big museums tend to eat most of a a
-If you go to the American Museum of Natural History, go early. The AMNH has a “pay what you like” policy that some abuse to pay a buck or two, but you have to wait in some long lines to get to the counter to pay that price. If you pay at the ticket kiosk or buy in advance, you play full price, but get right in. When you do go, immediately go up to the 4th floor and work your way down. A lot of people drift into the galleries immediately off the main entrance, which are some of the older/duller exhibits in the museum. When you get up to the 4th floor, start at the orientation center and work your way around, as the exhibits are in evolutionary tree order. The 4th floor also has “fossil explainers”, who I’ve found to be very helpful.
Ferry: or do it instead of the Statute of Liberty ferry. Yeah, you don’t get right up close - but nor do you spend hours and tough security lines.
Circle Line is another way to get a good view of the Statue. We did the one that went all around the island - saw parts of Manhattan we had never seen before.
-The Metropolitan Museum of Art Is another all-day museum. It also has a pay-what-you-go system, but only for NY, NY, or CT residents. An admission to the Met also gets you admission to the Met’s outposts at the Met Breuer (Modern and Contemporary Art) on Madison Ave and the Cloisters (Medieval Art & Architecture) in Fort Tryon Park on the north end of Manhattan, which are good over a three-day period.
The Cloisters are one of my favorite spots in the city. Its isolated location means it’s never crowded and the museum itself is made up of transported and reconstructed medieval architecture. It’s one museum where I would strongly recommend taking the guided tour. There’s a small coffeeshop in one of the courtyards.
Fort Tryon Park is pretty nice, too. It’s on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River and has some nice views. There’s a pretty nice restaurant tucked away in there as well.
Who can go to Katz’s and eat a whole pastrami sandwich and still actually have room for anything else? Some delis have the half-sandwich & soup combo, but I’m not sure if Katz’ does.
As I mentioned above, one of the two dinosaur galleries on the fourth floor is closed - the one with the T Rex.
You also can buy admission to either one or all of the shows, so if you buy such you might want to hang around near the entrance of the show.
The rye bread is as important as the pastrami. And you can mail order all this stuff. When I was general chair of my conference I got a big Katz’s mail order for the closing party. Since the conference was close, I got to take the extras home.
I’m so making a Sables order soon.
I think the 2nd Avenue Deli (not on 2nd Avenue anymore) is comparable to Katz’. I’ve hear good things about Sarge’s Deli, but I’ve never been.
Whether you get your order at the counter or get table service, Katz’s isn’t really the place for diners really into “have it your way”. For example, don’t insist on your pastrami sandwich on white bread with ketchup.
If you are going down to the Lower East Side to go to Katz’s Deli, and you can still think of food afterwords, stop at Russ & Daughters, the fourth generation appetizing shop. All the smoked, cured, and pickled fish you could over hope for, along with fish eggs, chopped fish salads, and cream cheese spreads. They also sell the bagels, bialys, and challah to put them on, not to mention rugelach, babka, and halvah. They’ll serve it up on a sandwich over the counter for you. I recommend the Super Heebster (Whitefish & Baked Salmon Salad with Horseradish Dill Cream Cheese and Wasabi Flying Fish Roe).
Russ & Daughters recently opened up a sit-down cafe around the corner.
Also a few door down from Katz’s on Houston Street is the Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery.
And then there’s the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). If I had to choose between the MOMA and Guggenheim, I’d choose MOMA hands down. A great collection, a great space. Even the cafe and museum store are interesting. MOMA is open late Friday evenings, and admission is free then (several museums do the free Friday evening thing).
Across Delancey from Russ and Daughters is the Tenement Museum, which gives tours. We too Hard Times, which showed the rooms in that building and the families who lived there during the Panic of '73 and the Great Depression. There are tours to other nearby buildings. My father grew up around there - without a lot of money, to put it mildly, so I was really interested.
I looked in at Russ and Daughters, and it was bit too fancy-shmancy for me. The great thing about the bagel stores near where I stayed was that the had plain, onion, poppy and sesame bagels, and maybe bialys, not the sun dried tomato asiago cheese with goat milk bagels which dominate the Bay Area.
One museum I haven’t seen mentioned is the Intrepid Museum if you are into that sort of thing.
I only had about a day and a half in NYC and did the Intrepid Museum and the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island. I also went to a restaurant on restaurant row which is an easy walk from the Intrepid Museum. Someone on this board told me about restaurant row.
Is it perhaps possible that tourists think that something like this is a New York bagel, instead of something like these? Because I gotta say, based on my own experience, New York bagels are fucking fantatsic, and I’d hate for anyone to make that mistake.
