lacajun

Hi,

I need help to decide which tour book to buy for NY city and where to buy it. I will be arriving in Ny on Dec 14 for 4 nights with my daughter and 2 granddaughters 22 and 19. I decided not to take the hop on hop off bus. We will walk or ride the subway or bus to all the places we want to see.

Please help.

nytraveler

Suggest you head for the nearest sizeable book store and browse the volumes. There are so many - for different interests and price points - you're sure to find what you want.

(I never find one is enough and for a new city usually get 2/3 - one general, one on restaurants and often one with local walks.)

magialmemories

Hands down I love the DK Eyewitness Travel books. I have them for several countries and I would never use any other book.

The have each area broken down into color coded sections by area and give the history of the area as well as top visitor spots, phone numbers, maps, local transportaion tips....comprehensive and easy to read. Cant say enough good things about this series.

The subway is easy to take and very safe. New York is one of the easiest cities to travel and you will be amazed at how much you can see in four days.

doug_stallings

Hmmm ... how about the Fodor's guide?

Look, I really love some aspects of the DK books, but for actual trip-planning, I found next to worthless.

We've been adding a lot of very useful features to our books, especially our major city guides, and some of them (including NYC) are now in color. Other guides can be good if you are looking for a specialist book (the WPA guide, for instance, if you are very interested in historical buildings), but I would be remiss if I didn't say that I genuinely think our NYC book is the best.

Aduchamp1

Whatver you do, do not purchase the Michelin Guide for NYC. It is so Francocentric as to be useless. I purchased it the first year it was printed and have not bought it since. They shrug off some fo the best restaurants in NYC due to their capracious crtiteria.

china_cat

For New York, I particularly like the Access New York guide book. I like they way they are organized by location, so you can easily find all the sights you want to see in a given area, along with where to eat, where to shop, and how to get there. The Access guides are great for cities in general, and I think it is the best guide book for New York.

happytrailstoyou

I agree with nytraveler. I find that I usually need to purchase two guidebooks to cover all the bases. Here are some of the guide books you may find on the shelves of your local bookstore: http://gonyc.about.com/od/newyorkcit...vel_guides.htm

lacajun

Thanks to everyone for your help on the tour book. I went on the Bornes and Noble site and purchased the Fodor's NY City 2009 and the NY city transit map.

doug_stallings

Let me know what you think of the book. I'd love to hear your feedback.

doug_stallings

By the way, here's an interesting recent review of NYC guidebooks from the NY Times.
http://tinyurl.com/6o9pwj