New York City: Still Affordable, Still Fun

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

Inexpensive destinations are surely benefitting these days of tight money – just as Wal-Mart is rejoicing now the former glitterati are finding their way to its aisles. But what about traditionally expensive places that have seemingly regarded both the tourist and the business traveler as innocents to be plucked like a Thanksgiving turkey? At a time when many travelers are staying home and doing an unprecedented American thing – saving their money – does anything, for example, at the Big Apple come cheap? Has something in any way happened to reduce the cost of visiting America’s biggest and internationally most famous city? Those are important questions and the short answer is No. Yet careful planning, as always, can surely help to make costs bearable.

Not much can be done these days about the horror and cost of flying although sometimes flights to a hub like New York can be cheaper than shorter local flights where carriers don’t have competition. Driving is seldom an option especially when the cost of a garage for one night approaches the price of a hotel room one generation back.

What about hotels? The internet has created informed consumers for hotels as it has for those seeking rates on life insurance or, a bad word today, a mortgage. It seems smart to compare prices and then locations, say, on Google maps, but if the taxi fare from any peripheral hotel to, for example, Times Square, is likely to be less than $10, just cab it and forgo the expensive hotel right there in the middle of the action. At a time when many hotels still charge $400 a night without batting an eyelid you can get much better breaks on hotels by going online and using a search engine. For example the 420-room Hotel Empire on the West Side at 44 W 63 Street with, for instance, winter rates offers a standard queen for $299 a night. This is a terrific price for an upscale hotel in New York and you are close to Central Park and the Lincoln Center -- and a Metro station. The Empire offers complimentary WiFi, newspaper, pool and fitness center, and restaurants. On the other hand on the East Side at 230 E 51 Street, you’ll find the Pod Hotel -- five minutes walk from the celebrated Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue and even less to the local Lexington Metro station. At the Pod a queen with private shower is $169. Like the Empire it offers free WiFi but its flat panel TV is 20 inches versus the 32 inches on the wall at the Hotel Empire. Its rooms are very small but how much are you in your room in frenetic New York City? The Hotel Empire is stately and elegant and very comfortable. The Pod Hotel, converted from the old Pickwick Arms, is a hip spot for younger persons, indeed one web reviewer called the Pod ideal for “upscale backpackers.” We’re senior citizens but we stayed at the Pod this time and found it more than adequate. Our three night stay was just over $500 but you’ll find New York adds three separate obscene taxes to your hotel bill.

Transportation costs can be a large part of any city visit although New York has some of the most reasonable taxi rates in the country. Even for a short stay you should study the almost incomprehensible Metro maps you can get from any tourist office or even now print out from Googlemaps. It’s not clear why NYC publishes a Metro map that covers all five boroughs when most tourists simply want a large scale map of Manhattan itself. The lines on the Metro map are identified with colors that suggest you would find locals calling them Blue Line, Red Line and so on, but at the stations the trains are recognized only by numbers except when they are identified by the alphabet. Go figure! The train service works well and locals say it is safe until late in the night. It may be confusing to tourists even those world travelers who have easily ridden the Paris, Moscow and Madrid Metro lines but it seems to be perplexing to street-smart local persons also which may be why a question for the best route to your destination always seems to get different answers. We’d suggest you go to a book store and buy a proprietary Metro map before your visit. And you should email the official website for NYCvisit.com. The office is useful but the website is slow (and in beta form) but still worth a visit.

Buy the City Pass for $74 that gives admission to six specific attractions the best of which must be, to be sure, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, less obviously, the 2-hour Circle Line cruise of New York’s Harbor that’s an absolute delight. The cruise with a most helpful narration from the captain gives even the most informed tourist more information and a fresh look at this long-established city. Thirteen new piers just for recreation are being built on the West Side, one with ice rinks, bowling alleys and golf driving ranges. But there’s interest in the past also. The boat goes past the Brooklyn Navy Yard that once employed 70,000 people. It’s now being developed as the biggest movie studio in the United States. New York City has always been a favorite of Hollywood’s.

The captain points out on our right Governor’s island, once a prison in 1812 and a location for An Officer and a Gentleman, and on our left the skyscraper and its windows used for the zoom shot in Working Girl. Many of the buildings are familiar. We’ve seen them in movies from An Affair To Remember, to Ghost Busters. 

Many of the displays at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, arguably the greatest museum in the world, are familiar also. We’ve seen them in newspaper stories, magazine articles and school text books but it’s always a thrill to see them in person.

The charms of the Guggenheim Museum -- just seven blocks farther north on 5^th Avenue -- are less easy to rave about apart from its magnificent Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. To our eyes that have trouble understanding modern art, the clever and obscure comments painted on the ramps are rather too precious as if those coming up with the graffiti-like comments (you can’t really call them quotations) were rather too pleased with themselves. Such as: “I remember more than you know.” “I am aware of what you have done.” “Nothing will ever be the same.” “There is something you should know.” This sounds like the love notes and inane drivel high school kids used to pass around a long time ago and it seems strange a world-class museum would consider this worthy of space. In addition our unsophisticated opinion is that the current photography exhibits there are not particularly distinguished.

It’s all a question of personal taste, of course, and ours doesn’t run to the extremes of modern art—not even to those shown at the Museum of Modern Art itself. We’ve tried to appreciate modern art but we still feel when we see an unadorned canvas that is completely white or red or a three dimensional spread that looks like trash about to be dumped, that someone needs to shout, “the Emperor has no clothes!”

So why go? Well it was part of the City Pass and we keep trying to be enlightened and we go in the hope of seeing a talent, a flair, something just not made popular because of the patronage of some wealthy dowager.

The Museum of Natural History over on the West Side is more down to earth as you’d expect from anything supported by Teddy Roosevelt. As with the Metropolitan, there never seems to be enough time to do it all.

You need to give yourself time, too, for something as innocent as wandering through SOHO and the Village and its surrounding streets. This is where you meet the people, the characters who put their mark on the city. This, like a stroll in Central Park, might be New York at its least frantic and most fun.