-The Museum of the Moving Image was well worth the trip. My Dad (a notoriously impatient man) and I spent several hours there. The permanent Jim Henson collection and exhibition were great and there was also a very extensive hands-on exhibit on sports video games, so you can go relive your youth playing Pong or NBA Jam or whatever.
-The National Museum of Mathematics was less so. Don’t go unless you have young kids.
Seeing the recent post made me remember this thread. I said way, way, up above that my wife was bugging me to go, so we did, the week before Christmas.
We loved New York!
As I suspected, though the pizza sucked (and I tried three different places). It was never any different than the “New York ‘Style’” places I mentioned above. Maybe “sucked” is too strong; pizza is still pizza, after all, but I suppose you have to be a New Yorker to appreciate that particular form of the art.
Similarly, the bagels were just bagels. Not the kind from the plastic bag in the grocery store, but pretty much the standard fare I’ve gotten at bagel counters across the country.
What did I love? The Chinese food in Flushing was out of this world. It was like actually being in Chongqing (I’m partial to Sichuan food). We have some good places here in SE Michigan, but boy, this place really knocked it out of the park. My area of SE Michigan in particular has a lot of Chinese and Japanese immigrants and guest workers, but there are no shoppes with Chinese letters. Flushing was kind of like being in China, except for the crappy, low-quality subway.
We did the tourist stuff, and it didn’t impress me, but that was to check off a box anyway. What I really loved was Central Park. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I usually hate art museums because they’re all pretty much the same: too much old pottery, some mummies, and finally, in a small section, some actual paintings (which I do enjoy). The Met, though, puts a lot of effort into displaying the boring stuff that I’ve seen way too many times all over the world, and that really impressed me. We actually went twice, it was so large.
I’d love to go back and enjoy Central Park in the summer, and I really regret missing the Natural History museum, We’d planned to go to Coney Island, but it turns out the subways are really too slow to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. It’s probably better in the summer anyway.
I think I’d consider driving into Manhattan next time. I’ve heard all of the horror stories, but it seemed like pretty standard city traffic to me. On the other hand, ferry parking was cheap, so I’ll have to think about this some more.
That’s basically what JpnGal and I did for 10 days in 2017. We had advance tickets for 3 shows, and got awesome same-day tickets for 3 other shows.
Yeah, it’s just city driving, no big deal. The last time I drove into Manhattan was to pick something up at Macy’s. I was running late and had to get there just before the store was closing. Parked in a lot around the corner for 15 minutes: $22.
Is there something in particular you like? If you like food, not only is there an excellent restaurant within spitting distance of nearly any spot in the city, but there are a variety of walking tours to learn about and sample a variety of cuisines.
If you really like theatre, don’t go to the Broadway shows, look for the off-Broadway shows. You might get a dud, or you might see the show that everyone will be talking about a year from now.