My husband and I will be travelling to New York from Australia in September (last week), staying in NYC for 5 nights. We were thinking about visting Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Boston, Niagara Falls (Canadian side), then to Amish County Pennysylvania and onto Washington DC (staying 3 nights). As we only have 5 nights to do all this, we would love any suggestions. Our kids who are quite active and sporty will be 9 and 11 so we need to be doing lots of kid friendly activities. Planning on renting a car to travel around. Are there other places that would be more interesting? We are open to suggestions as we are planning this trip by ourselves. Many thanks!
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Wow, that's a very ambitious itinerary for 5 nights. Do you have 5 nights altogether or is it 5 nights in NYC, 5 nights in Washington D.C. and 5 nights for Boston/Niagara/Cape Cod/Pennsylvania? Either way, it's too much in too little time. I'd recommend cutting out Niagara Falls since it is so far away from everything else (8-9 hour drive from Boston) and I'd choose either Boston & Cape Cod or Philadelphia & Amish County...it's just not realistic to do both states on top of everything else. Good luck.
Are you saying you're spending 5 nights in NYC as well as visiting the other places you list? If yes, how much time do you have? Have you looked at a map with estimated travel time?? Or, I shudder, or are you saying you think you can do all those places in 5 nights as well as NYC?
I think your 5 "open" days would be best spent in the area between New York and Washington (including Philadelphia, Amish country, and perhaps a trip down to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia).
Going to Boston would eat up a lot of time just getting there and back. The drive from NYC to Boston is 4 hours, and you have to add to that the time to get the rental car. Then from Boston to DC would be at least 8 hours, so there is a day and a half of your 5 used up in driving/riding.
Boston, Cape Cod etc, are a trip on it's own, Niagara Falls isn't close to NYC by any stretch, the Canada side of the falls is similar to Las Vegas, and personally I didn't care for it when I was there, not much to do honestly. I agree with everyone above, split the time between DC and NYC
Thank you for your suggestions and sorry for the confusion. Basically on top of 5 nights in NYC and 3 nights in DC we have 5 spare nights to do some travelling and didn't know what was more exciting/interesting to do and see between North of NYC or West of DC with our two kids.
If you really want to do Boston, research the cost difference between renting a car and going on the train, or bus (Megabus and Bolt bus are very inexpensive) as you won't really need or want a car in the city. Likewise, for the trip to DC, unless you are going to do the Amish country.
As others have said, the trip between NYC and either DC or Boston can be very nasty and all three of these cities have good public transportation and parking can be both expensive and inconvenient in the city.
As someone who lives only 90 minutes from Amish country, I strongly urge you NOT to go that far out of your way. Lancaster is a nice day trip while staying in Philadelphia, but it is NOT worth missing some of the cities on the east coast in order to see it. Mainly because almost everything you will encounter while on your trip has almost nothing to do with the Amish, who have spent centuries trying to avoid contact with English-speaking peoples.
I also agree that Niagara Falls is so far away from the East Coast that it isn't worth the two days you would need to visit -- during which you would see nothing else.