New York City

[Splatacus]

I'm off to New Yoik! :D :p

I'm spending very nearly a whole day there, so my question is as follows:

In June, I've got 23 hours and 30 minutes in New York City, what thing(s) should I definitely see/do in my time there? :)

[SweetieBot]

I'm off to New Yoik! :D :P

I'm spending very nearly a whole day there, so my question is as follows:

In June, I've got 23 hours and 30 minutes in New York City, what thing(s) should I definitely see/do in my time there? :)

Oooo. What do you like? I mean there's the usual tourist things (Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Times Square etc), but there's also so much more. The two things I think everyone should do for sure are visiting the 9/11 memorial and seeing a broadway show (and yes, these are very opposite). But then there are museums (I especially loved the American Museum of Natural History) and neighbourhoods that are fun just to walk around in (I especially enjoyed Brooklyn and Little Italy). There's amazing food depending what you like. And so, so much more.

Can you tell I'm a bit of an NYC fangirl? Seriously though, it does depend what kind of things you enjoy while traveling.

[Larkaloke]

My favourite thing there is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in general. I actually like The Cloisters the best -- that's a small wing far removed from the rest of the museum dedicated to medieval art -- but the main museum is spectacular as well, it's just that the other is more remote/less crowded and contains only things I'm extremely interested in. There's a nice park nearby it as well.

Central Park is neat, although when I've been there it's always been horribly hot. I'm sure it's nicer to wander through in the spring than it is in high summer, and there are some interesting things to be seen there. I also like the High Line, which is a section of old raised rail tracks that was renovated into a park. The Whitney Museum is at one end of it, if you're into modern art.

The American Museum of Natural History is of course quite interesting, but it's not my favourite natural history museum. Doesn't mean it's not worth seeing, although I believe they're still in the process of renovating my favourite section (the dinosaur wing). I also like the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum; it's mainly on and in an aircraft carrier and a pier, so probably something to skip if the weather is poor, but there's some real interesting stuff there.

Walking around the lower end of Manhattan is pretty nice, too. There's mostly park along the edges, since Battery Park wraps around most of that, and the old seaport district is neat. There are also a few museums down there, such as the Skyscraper Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian.

I've only been there to participate in theater/stage combat stuff, so I've mostly been very busy and only able to spend a day or two sightseeing. I've also ended up being there in the height of summer, which makes everything less pleasant. I'm not much of a big city person -- lots of people, lots of noise, and dirty air is a bad combination to me -- but there are some really cool things to see there. I've been too busy doing theater to see a show there, but I know that's a good thing to do!

[PerformativeSurprise]

The two things I think everyone should do for sure are visiting the 9/11 memorial and seeing a broadway show (and yes, these are very opposite).

I completely agree. The 9/11 Memorial is extremely well done and absolutely worth a visit (but it is pretty intense). If you do go, I would allow a few hours for it.

And of course, Broadway is a NYC experience everyone should have :) . I love Broadway shows, and I try to go to a play every time I visit. If you are worried about price at all, there are always the TKTS booths.

[Guest]

If you like pizza, check out John's Pizzeria on Times Square (W. 44th Street)...seriously the best pizza I've ever had!

[Éadweard]

I did a day trip to NYC last spring. I just walked around midtown and looked at the sites all the way from the Empire State Bulding to Central Park and back. Everything is really in walking distance.

[Mermaidy]

i live near and have been there a bunch of times. does anyone think it smells like chocolate in some parts? i always get that

[NYLinguist]

I always recommend that people go to downtown manhattan. Little Italy is right there for food, the village, canal street, and so on. There's also a really cool dive bar called Jekylll & Hyde's on S 7th between Grove and Barrow. THOUGH if you'd rather stay closer to midtown then you can just pick a direction and walk, more or less. Grand Central is around there, Central Park, FAO Schwarz, and Broadway for a show is always a great option.

[drjohnhwatson]

I was just there in March for five nights and technically five days but the fifth day was spent in the train station, so.

I mean there's so much to choose from. The Cloisters are simply beautiful and everything there is old (like, they've taken pieces of medieval stuff so you walk through a door from the fifteenth century, and in this room here there are seats from the 14th century). They've got a little gardening area with plants that would have grown then and wonderful stone work...it was so calming and worth the ages it took to get there and ferocious cab fee, haha. There's the MET itself, which was my favourite because of all the historical pieces and there were so many different wings; we got there just about right on the dot at 10 and left about fiveish or so and it closes at five thirty so...... There's the American Museum of Natural History if you really like preserved animals and dinosaur bones. The MOMA if you like Modern Art (eh..., although I was happy just to see The Persistence of Memory and Starry Night). The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Empire State Building...

Also in Greenwich Village there's Stonewall Inn (my friend wanted to go so I obliged him, but he couldn't get in because he wasn't 21 and I don't drink much at all) and right basically across the street is Big Gay Ice Cream.

There's all the Broadway shows going on too! Central Park.

I mean...you could be there a month straight and still not even cover a fraction of the stuff in NYC. (I was just wracking my brains as to what we did when we were there. We went to Sleepy Hollow, but that's not feasible for you on such a short time limit).

EDIT: Just remember that if you're going to a museum, it might say that the entry fee is $25, or $30, or even more, but that's not necessarily true. For the MET and for the AMNH, that's the recommended fee, but you can pay a dollar even and get in. The MOMA is a set price, though. Instead of ending up paying a grand total of $97, I ended up paying $25 (my friend insisted on paying for us for the cloisters and for the MET and we went on different days and he paid $5 at the MET and $1 at the cloisters, HAHA. I paid $25 at the MOMA).