Everything & Anything New York City

lewroll

Hi everyone,
Going to NY on Sunday Yipee!

Was going to take all spends apart from hotel costs, pre paid trips etc in US Dollars but can I ask from experienced NY travellers
Is it better/cheaper to use mainly credit card or better/cheaper to use mainly cash please?
Also what is the exchange rate like in NY itself and do you have to pay commission there?

Many thanks in advance for any help

Philippa36

Definitely cheaper to use a credit card and pay it all off when you get home - I got a higher exchange rate. You'll need some cash, but most places take credit cards.

melli_2

dmg24 wrote: »

To be fair, you can't really blame BA for not giving you the extra money as they would have rerouted you once your flight was confirmed as cancelled.

There was no guarantee that they would be able to re-route me. Plus they could have sent me to Chicago or Washington or somewhere else and I'd still have to make my own way to NYC...

Danigrace

http://www.10best.com/New_York,NY/restaurants.html

I have come across this website which has discounted dining coupons available to purchase for restaurants all over USA. For example, buy a $25 coupon for $10. At the moment until Monday 31st May, they have an 80% off code, meaning you could buy the $25 coupon for only $2. There are some terms attached to some of the coupons, like minimum spends and gratuity being added on before the coupon is deducted, and probably sales tax being added onto your total purchase (have not got to the end of the checkout process).
When you click the link to purchase the coupons, you are directed to restaurant.com. There are 411 restaurants showing for NY.
I have come across coupons like this before, but my question is if anyone has heard of or used 10best.com / restaurant.com to purchase anything like this before?
I have been on MSE for a while now and am a firm believer in 'if it looks too good to be true, it usually is!', but this one I am not sure of.
Any help or info would be appreciated. Thank you. :-)

karie

Hi there I have used restaurant.com for a similar voucher for a restaurant in Las Vegas. 90% off! Worked a treat, no worries! Karie

Danigrace

karie wrote: »

Hi there I have used restaurant.com for a similar voucher for a restaurant in Las Vegas. 90% off! Worked a treat, no worries! Karie

Thanks Karie, that is good to know. Off to buy some coupons then :-)
Can you remember if they had an expiry date on them and if so how long away was the date from when you printed the coupon out?

sarahd_3

hi guys,
we're going to new york on the 12th june for a week and have just been let down by our accomodation (the apartment we were planning to rent was shown as being downtown, but was actually at the top of harlem) so i'm starting to look for budget hotels (we were hoping to spend about £100 - £130 a night) and wondered if anyone had any recommendations - trip advisor seems to give them all really mixed reviews
thanks for any advice, much appreciated

cloudy_nines

Hello all

We just returned from a combined New York/Vegas trip and I thought I would share my experiences.

We were in Vegas for 11 nights and then flew from Vegas to JFK on Thursday 20th. We flew with Delta airlines for all our flights (4 in total) and I found Delta just fine. Excellent IFE, good food (well as good as it can be on planes), helpful staff. I would not hesitate in flying with them again.

Back to New York. We flew in at about 8.30pm and caught a cab to our hotel. We stayed in the Country Inn & Suites in Queens. The care fare was $45 which included a tip and tax. We picked the hotel as the cost for 5 nights in a city view room was £450 which I thought was a bargain. I had done my research beforehand and I knew we were a 5 min walk from the subway and 6 stops into Times Square. My research proved right and getting to and from Manhattan was painless and I wouldn't hesitate staying outside Manhattan again if we went. Our hotel room looked over the Manhattan skyline which was fab. The room was large, had a big flat screen TV, microwave, fridge and nice bathroom. The hotel itself provided free brekkie but I admit we never ate there!

After we checked in and dropped our stuff of at the hotel, we caught a subway straight into Times Square. Good god! There were people EVERYWHERE! Never have I seen a place so busy! We were dazzled by all the lights and took a million pics. We were hungry so we had dinner at Charley's. I found it nice but very expensive for what it was. It didn't help that my chocolate martini cost $11 - ouch! We were planning on exploring more, but after the meal we were just so tired after the flight and as we hardly got any sleep the night before, we just headed straight back. We were in bed around midnight.

FRIDAY

The next morning we somehow slept until 11, oopsie. We got up and went into Times Square again to pick up our Grey Line bus tour tickets which we had prebooked. The weather was hot, humid and sticky. We q'd for the uptown bus for about 10 mins and then hopped on. It's a hop on, hop off bus, but we were quite content to sit and take in the city on the whole loop. The bus passed through Harlem and while we were waiting at some traffic light we say a young boy get hit by a car right in front of us. It was horrible. He got up and seemed ok from where we were sitting, but it must have been quite a hit and the cars window screen was smashed.

We come to the end of the uptown tour and decided to hop on to the downtown tour. It was quite late in the day and it only went as far at the staten island ferry. We decided to make the most of the free ferry and went over to staten island and back, taking loads of pics along the way. The views were impressive!

After that, we walked to Wall Street and Ground Zero and had a general mooch around, taking pics. We then headed back to Times Square and we went to the cinema to watch the new Shrek movie in 3D. The film was fantastic!!! By the time the film had finished, it was 2am so we just headed straight back to the hotel.

SATURDAY

Woke up late, 12pm! Went straight to Times Square again and queued at the TKTS booth for show tickets. We were queuing about 1.5 hours and I was getting a little fed up. However, we finally reached the booth and purchased tickets for Mary Poppins. The discount was 30% but we really wanted to see it so we paid the money. We then went to catch the downtown bus and we wanted to complete the rest of the tour. We stayed on the bus until we reached Rockefeller Centre which was almost the last stop. We bought tickets for TOTR and went straight up no queues. The lift is a little un-nerving though. The views were great and we took loadsa pics again. After that we ate at an Irish restaurant, but I can't remember the name of it. The food was fine. We then went to Mary Poppins and the show was superb. Enjoyed every second and everyone gave a standing ovation at the end. Was going to go up the Empire State building after that. but we were too tired so we straight back to the hotel.

SUNDAY

We had to be by the Pulitzer fountain on 5th Ave for 11am as we have prebooked a Sex and the City tour. As a SATC fan, I was really excited about this. OH not so much, bless him! There was some kind of parade going on, and walking from 42nd street to 58th street along 5th Ave was not much fun. However, we made the tour in time and clambered aboard the bus. I LOVED IT! If you like SATC this is a must. Stopped of at quite a few different places and I recognised so much from the show. It was brill! This lasted until 2.30 ish. We then went to explore the New York library. We then thought we'd go to Macy's, but we really were not that impressed!! Neither of us bought anything and left disappointed. We then went to Old Navy which is a shop I have been to before in the US and bought a load of stuff from there. I bought trackie bottoms, 2 hoodies, 5 T-Shirts and socks for $65 which I thought was excellent. By this time it was dark so we decided to go up the ESB. Excellent I thought, no queue's as we approach the entrance. Haha, how wrong was I? There were massive q's in between the first and second elevator and by this time my feet were hurting so much, I could barely stand it much longer. We stuck it out though and eventually reached the top. The views at night were stunning and we took a load of pics before leaving. Thankfully the q's to leave were not long at all. We left the ESB not realising we took a wrong turn and we walk for ages wondering where the subway was. It wasn't until we got out a map and realised we were walking along the wrong avenue! How annoying. We turned back and got the subway back to the hotel and just crashed.

MONDAY

Had a central park bike tour booked for 10am, but when the alarm went off at 8.30am we were just so tired we phoned them and put the tour back to 1pm. I don't know what it is about NYC, but it left us so exhausted, we could just sleep and sleep and sleep! In Vegas, no matter what time we went to bed, unless it was 4am or something, we were awake by 9.30 - 10 most days feeling refreshed. I just think the humidity of NYC sucks the energy out of you, I was sweating buckets just walking around and there is no way I could handle it in July/August. In Vegas the temps were higher, but as the heat was dry, we didn't sweat. Anyway, back to the programme...

Went for our bike tour at 1pm which lasted just over 2 hours. It was very good and the tour guide was really nice. The ride wasn't too tiring as it was reasonably flat. Once we finished we caught a subway over to where the outside of the Friends apartment is filmed ( I know the show is filmed in LA but I really wanted a pic of the apartment building! ) and we had a general wander around the area (The Village). We then went to Grand Central Station which was impressive, followed by some food in the dining bit which was lovely! We then decided to walk the Brooklyn bridge, or part of it, so we caught a subway to the nearest station near the WTC and walked from there to half way across the bridge and back again. By now the sun was setting so the views were excellent. After this we just went back to the hotel to pack and grab an early-ish night.

TUESDAY

Our last day. We checked out the hotel at 12pm and then went into Manhatten. We did have plans to go to the MOMA and/or the space museum, but by the time we got to Chelsea Piers and had a go in one of the batting cages and had some beers and something to eat, there just was not enough time. So we went back to the hotel, called a cab and went to the airport. Our flight was delayed by two hours by the flight itself was only 6 hours 32 mins. I had some kid behind me who decided to play a game on the IFE (which is touch screen) just as I was trying to get some much needed sleep. All I felt was the back of my head rest being prodded for what seemed like forever. I wanted to say something to him, but he was only young and obviously very excited about visiting the UK, I didn't want to upset him. However, what annoyed me more, was that as everyone was waking up, he decided to stop and do some colouring in instead. Typical!

SUMMARY

I know some people are not going to like this, but although I enjoyed New York and I am so glad we went, I am in no real hurry to return. I thought the city was just too busy, quite smelly and dirty in places and I was not as impressed as I thought I would be. Don't get me wrong, I had a good time, but IMHO it was nowhere near as good as Las Vegas (where I do want to return - badly!) although I do fully appreciate they are two completely different cities / experiences so maybe the two are incomparable. My OH felt the same. I found the NY subway system to be not a patch on the London Underground, the only better thing about it is that it runs 24/7. Several times we walked straight past the subway entrance, not even knowing it's there and why are there so few escalators!

We enjoyed ourselves and saw some amazing things, but I think I've scratched my New York itch now!

Hopefully you enjoyed reading!

mcphail

Thanks very much cloudy_nines - it must of taken you ages to type that all up, but very informative for me, as I will be going on Thursday - and can't wait! I'm glad you had a good holiday, and welcome home for a well deserved rest!

cloudy_nines

mcphail wrote: »

Thanks very much cloudy_nines - it must of taken you ages to type that all up, but very informative for me, as I will be going on Thursday - and can't wait! I'm glad you had a good holiday, and welcome home for a well deserved rest!

Thanks! Between the two destinations we just walked and walked and walked, neither were relaxing at all! Just trying to chill out now before going back to work on Tuesday.

I hope you have a nice time and looking forward to hearing about it!