Stewart

I am looking for suggestions for a long week-end in NY city with a 16 yr old. He has suggested the trip so I want to make it interesting for him. We also need a hotel centrally located and of moderate price (Ho jo, HInn, etc) Thank you. (Travelling up from W. DC)

eliztrav

While I'm not sure what you mean by moderate price, I would suggest that you look at the listings at www.quikbook.com for NYC for your dates. Check out the ones that look good to you and are in your price range, and come back here for information on your top choices. One of my personal favorites is the Gorham on West 55th. Near Times Square, Central Park, Rockefeller Center, Carnegie Hall, etc. All rooms there have kitchenettes including a microwave. Good when you have teenagers always looking for snacks or take out, and a way to cut some costs so you can splurge at times. There are many other choices, of course. If you are travelling before March, you'll get the benefit of lower winter rates in many of them.

Merilee_Tucker

Stewart, I also highly recommend The Gorham Hotel on West 55th Street. You can't beat it for style, class, price, and location. What is the 16 year old interested in? Museums, sports, etc.?

iblitz

What about The Hudson Ian Schrager? Rooms are VERY small but the hotel is OHHHHHHHH so cool! and cheap--We recently bid on a room for a fri/sat. and got it for 90.00 a night. Good location too.

Shannon_mcg

The first time i went to NYC was when I was 16. Here is a list of the things we did. I went with my school so these activities suitable for both guys and girls. Everyone had a great time too:

Empire State Building, Statue of Liberity,southside seaport, central park walking tour, 2 broadway shows (Tommy and Miss Siagon), dinner at the hardrock cafe, museum of natural history, Metro museum of art.

8 years later my memory isn't as good as it was and I can't rememeber what else we did. We went for 3 days. If he has similar tastes to myself I would also check out the tour of NBC studios, the museum of Radio and Television and ground zero. If he wants to go to NYC I'm sure he has his own ideas too. Also maybe you can get tickets to late night with conan O'Brien or The daily show with Jon Stewart. Most other shows have tickets sopken for 6-9 months in advance.

Best of luck
Shannon

Shannon_mcg

I forgot to mention that if he is a sports fan maybe you could check out a basketball,baseball or Hockey game, depending on whats in season when you go

emd

My teens enjoyed ice skating in Central Park, a broadway show, the Sony Tech center (free, but get there early), and the best was the new Madame Tousauds Wax Museum- it was worth the money and very very entertaining for all of us. We stayed at the Sheraton Manhattan which has a great indoor olympic size pool for burning off that 16 yr old energy too.

LarryJG62

I gave these suggestions on another thread:

Times Square. He'll definitely get a kick out of seeing the MTV studios. Check the MTV.com website to see if there are tours available or how to see TRL Live in person. Virgin Megastore is pretty cool too (just up the block).

Rangers and Knicks play at Madison Square Garden so check Ticketmastercom for tickets.

If he's into science, take him to the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium.

djkbooks

You can do much better with Hotwire or Priceline (if you do your homework) than Quikbook, than trying to book a "moderate price" hotel otherwise.

If you're planning to visit the Empire State Building, go to their website to purchase and print your tickets before leaving home, thereby skipping the long ticket lines.

Sara

I was in NYC last weekend with my 17 year old son. We did the NBC studio tour, which he thought was pretty cool - we got to watch the cast of Saturday Night Live rehearsing for a few minutes.

We also visited a really neat museum, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, at 90 Orchard St. If your son has any interest in history, or wants to understand more about how New York became the great multicultural city that it is, he might enjoy that. It's an old tenement building that thousands of immigrants lived in over the years. When the museum acquired it, a lot of research was done on the people who had lived there, and the lives of several of them, of different nationalities and eras, are represented in the different apartments. You take a guided tour, and several different tours are available. The one we took focused on the garment industry; one of the apartment was set up as a small factory making women's dresses in the 1890's (which it really was at the time). Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and informative, and we found it all to be pretty fascinating. You can get more info and a description of their tours at www.tenement.org. They also offer a walking tour of the Lower East Side. After our tour, we spent a long time walking around the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho, and Greenwich Village. Lots to see, and you really get a feel for the different neighborhoods - it's amazing how much things can change in just a couple of blocks. We wished we'd had more time to poke around the galleries in Soho.

Things we've done on past visits to New York that my kids have enjoyed are visits to the Mueum of Natural History, the United Nations, and riding on the Staten Island Ferry (it's free) for a view of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline (now so sadly altered); they also liked the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum, which they visited with their Boy Scout Troop (I haven't been there myself). And, of course, they loved Times Square; try to go there at night when the huge electronic signs light the whole place up.

I hope you'll go see at leat one Broadway show; you can get half price tickets to many of them at the TKTS booth in Times Square. Be aware that they only accept cash, no credit cards. Have a great time!