There is no doubt that New York City is one of the greatest in the world and my personal favorite. You know when you travel somewhere for a few days and around the middle of your vacation, you feel like you’ve seen everything the city has to offer? New York City is the exact opposite of that. No matter how many times I visit, I feel like there’s always more to see.
If you’re going to New York for the first time, there are the obligatory touristy things you have to do. With the City Pass (http://www.citypass.com/city/ny.html) you can see these all relatively inexpensively. For just $65, you gain access to some of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. The Empire State Building, for example, is something most people like to do when they’re in the city. With the City Pass, you can also take a Circle Line sightseeing boat tour around Manhattan. It takes you from the Wall Street area all the way around to the Statue of Liberty, all the while you learn interesting information about the buildings and bridges you pass on the way.
If you like museums, New York city is the place to go. With the City Pass you gain access to the city’s most famous and world renowned museums including the Museum of Modern Art (the MoMA), the American Museum of Natural History, the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, more commonly referred to as just The Met. For the art lover, this is a dream. You could comfortably spend a week there and just enjoy the city’s museums. The Met, in particular, is definitely quite an undertaking. With three floors and 19 different departments ranging from Roman to American and modern art. You could easily spend a day in The Met. It’s like it’s own tiny city.
So you’ve been to the Empire State Building, gone to four museums and taken a boat tour around Manhattan, all for $65. What now? You can keep it cheap by visiting the iconic parts of New York without spending a dime except maybe on subway fare. You can see Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Wall Street, Ground Zero, Trump Tower, Little Italy and Chinatown all for free. If you have an extra hour or so and you come at the right time of year, you can enjoy a little bit of ice skating in Rockefeller Plaza for about $20. If you like shopping, whether or not you go to actually buy anything, you can shop at some of the best stores in the world. An 8-story Macy’s? I want to faint just thinking about it.
If you enjoy tours, the city has tons of fun little tours. Some of the most talked about and recommended tours are the NBC Studio tour and the Sex and the City tour. At NBC, you can get a little bit of TV history while checking out some of the studios where your favorite shows like SNL are filmed. The Sex and the City tour takes you around the city to some of the spots featured on the show, like the Magnolia bakery.
If you have more money to spend while on vacation you can even catch a Broadway play or two. And if you want to save on tickets, you can buy day of performance tickets for up to 50% off at TKTS booths in Times Square or South Street Seaport. If you want to enjoy the city’s nightlife, you can go just about anywhere to have a few drinks and stay up all night. And if you still have some time to kill, you can take a stroll through Central Park. Maybe even check out the Central Park Zoo and see some penguins and polar bears in the middle of Manhattan.
And the food! I haven’t even mentioned the food! It is said that if you live in Manhattan for a year, you could conceivably eat in a different place for every meal of every day. That should give you a good idea to the variety in cuisine you can expect when you visit the Big Apple.
New York City has it all and it is all there for you to experience. What are you waiting for?
