Please talk to me about your fab New York experiences!

[LittleScottish]

Hi all,

I want to arrange a trip for DH, me and our DD (11) next year as he's always fancied NYC.

Would like to do 3 or 4 nights I think (is that enough?!) and do lots of iconic touristy things.

Would also like to splash out (a bit!) on a fancy, central hotel.

Please can you share your experiences (good or bad!) as well as your recommendations? Thank you kindly!

Ah, I remembered Ellis Island as being near Staten Island because I did it on the same day. My memory is not what it was in my twenties and I didn't have such a good camera to help me remember back then!

Placemarking

Cycle - you can hire the public ones and cycle along the Hudson. I cycled from Hell’s Kitchen to 911 memorial and then up to China Town. It was exhilirating!

The street performers in the subway stations are phenomenal. I spent a long time listening to these. So much talent.

Washing Sq - amazing atmosphere. Just chill there and chat to locals. If your kids have scooters (highly advised if they aren’t big walkers), they can scoot around. My then 6yo lives it and raced around with skateboarders.

Honestly, 3 nights isn’t enough. I love NY so much that I did two trips in a year. Don’t focus too much on getting stuff down - just walk and enjoy the streets.

I echo the advice about steering well clear of air BnB.

Also, don't get caught up in checking off a long list of 'must do' things. If you actually want to do them, do them, but not just for the sake of it. You'll be knackered and won't have had a chance to just wander around and stumble across cool things. I'm not a holiday snob, don't get me wrong (we ignored all fine dining advice and ate mostly pancakes and burgers when we were last there) but I think it's easy to get swept up in checking off all the iconic things without thinking about whether you actually want to do them. For example we didn't go up any observatories when we were last there. We used to live in a fairly big city overseas and prior to that I grew up somewhere with way more sky scrapers than NY, it just wasn't something we needed to do. But we did walk the highline, which we loved, did do central park etc. It's not that we think we're too cool for tourist stuff, not at all.

My tips would be Hotel Beacon to stay, rooms are big and have a kitchenette plus you're close to central park and levain bakery! Levain bakery is definitely somewhere I'd go if you're in the area. And embrace the jetlag and go early to places, you can always have a bit of downtime in the afternoon. We went in winter and were up early enough to see central park in the snow with hardly any footprints. It was fab.