I don’t know about all of you but planning any sort of vacation or get away is something that I have a huge love/hate relationship with! Of course it is exciting and fun to think of all the awesome things you are about to do; but it is stressful!! So when we started planning our recent trip to New York, I got extremely overwhelmed. New York is a huge city and we are coming from small town Idaho! I knew I had to do some research and prepare myself for higher prices and possibly more dangerous areas than what we are used to.
So this post is everything that I experience planning this trip to New York. I think it is a great guide for any vacation planning but specifically I will be talking about New York City! And if you want to know what I recommend in New York check out the 5 Things You Must Do In NYC. Or if you want a shorter but similar version of this post go check out 10 things to know before heading to NYC!
Flights and Hotels
To be honest I check on prices of flights to New York ALL THE TIME!! I have my Hopper App set to alert me if there are great deals to NYC anytime throughout the year because I love it there so much. And honestly, flights from Salt Lake City to NYC are never more than $350 round trip. In January I actually found them for $165 round trip!! We ended up deciding to go in May because of our jobs but if you are flexible with dates you can find tons of great deals! It is definitely a trip you will want to buy tickets in advance (at least 6 – 7 weeks) or else prices will jump up pretty high! Last minute tickets if we had tried to schedule something the two weeks prior would have been close to $400 or more so unless it is an emergency, plan ahead!
I will say that our flights went to the Newark airport in New Jersey and then we took the train into NYC. That was fine, it only took about an hour in travel time, but we have heard that the other airports have less issues with delayed flights. On our way home we were delayed over an hour and many people on our flight said they had always had issues at the Newark airport. And I think this may have been because they only have one runway for takeoff so part of the delay was us waiting in line to be able to take off.
When we were looking at places to stay our biggest decision was to stay close to the down town area and pay more per night or stay farther East and have a cheaper hotel cost but more travel time and transportation cost. We decided to pay the extra per night and stay down town Manhattan. We got an Airbnb so that we could get the full New Yorker experience but hotels were around the same cost. Normally when we stay in Airbnbs we utilize the full kitchen and save money on eating out but being the foodie that I am we ate out pretty much every meal so I would definitely take that into consideration when finding the perfect place to stay!
Planning our sight seeing
There are SO many things to see in New York City that we had a hard time deciding. Lucky for us we came across the Sightseeing Pass. It is a lot like the City Pass except it opens you up for more options. However, no matter which one you choose definitely get a pass because it makes NYC so much more affordable! The City Pass offers you the opportunity to see 6 of the major sight seeing spots in New York. 3 of which you have a choice between two options leaving you with a total of 9 options. We chose the Sight Seeing Pass because there were more choices of places to see.
The way that it works is you first decide between an unlimited pass or a number of sights. The unlimited pass is good for a certain number of days and you can go to as many attractions as you can in that amount of time. We chose the latter options which we just bought the pass for 6 attractions and then we could choose from any of the locations on the list. There are dozens of choices and you just pick as you go and don’t have to decide before hand. Also, with any pass you get, you basically get a fast pass line rather than waiting with the masses! Score!!!
Transportation
Before heading to New York many people had warned us about that taxis. Taxis can be very expensive, hard to catch, and if they know you are a tourist will drive you around racking up their tab because they know you don’t know any better! So we took everyone’s advice and didn’t take a single taxi. Thanks to all of the other public transportation options we didn’t really have any problems!
The first thing we did was bought a 7 day MetroCard. We figured the math and so long as we used this card 12 times it would more than pay for itself. Well between the subway, busses, and trains we probably used the card 7 times per day! We were always hopping on and off the subway and busses because it got us around so much quicker than walking. So definitely invest in a MetroCard. From there the only thing you have to pay for are the longer trains that go to the airports!
