First trip to NYC
 

Hello all,

I'm taking my first trip to NYC in late June of this year. I'll be there three days, arriving on June 21 in the afternoon, then flying back out early morning of the 24th. The activities I really want to see are listed below, and the ones I'm thinking about seeing are listed below those. Please help me either expand or narrow my options, along with some suggestions for good eats in those areas.

Must See:
Statue of Liberty/Ellis island
Ground Zero
UN Headquarters
Federal Reserve
NBC Studios/Rockefeller Center

Also Want to See
NYSE (Shame they no longer give tours, but at least I can still take photos of the facade.)
NYPD Museum
City Hall ( I heard they give tours)
Lower East Side Tenement Museum
NY Supreme Court (Hoping I run into a taping of Law & Order)
Chinatown
Eldridge St. Synagogue
Chelsea Market
Union Square Greenmarket
Empire State Building
Flatiron Building
Grand Central Terminal
Chrysler Building
St. Patrick's Cathedral
Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park
Central Park (Hopefully I can find a free concert)
Zabar's

Suggest you get to the Federal Reserve on this tour on the Monday you are here. The tour guide is great:

http://www.wallstreetwalks.com/tours.html

and that you get to battery park and do statue and ellis as early as you can that morning.

Unfortunately, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were sold out on Monday morning, so I selected early Tuesday morning instead.

Well - it looks like you really only have 2 and a little days - so you'll never get to all those places.

Some comments:

NBC tours does not get good reviews
Top of the Rock is IMHO better than Empire State and you can get advance timed tickets - to avoid wasting hours standing in line

A bunch of the places you have listed are really just look at for a few minutes from the outside: Chrysler, Flatiron, UN (unless you've signed up for a tour)

There's no way I would miss the Met - the greatest cultural institution in the western hemisphere (about 1,000 times more interesting than any market or Zabars). don;t get me wrong I love Zabars - and shop there a couple of times a month - but it's a deli (a very large and complete deli - but still a deli) - fine to grab something to picnic in the Park on -
but really not a tourist attraction in the class with a lot of others

Well, with me being the foodie that I am, a place so wholly focused on food can not be ignored. And considering the price of a ticket to The Met, I think I'll save that for my next trip, when I have more money.

Since you are going to be here only a couple of days, the best suggestion I can make is to get a map of the city and pick the things you want most to see, and concentrate on one area of the city at a time.

Tuesday's Ellis Island trip you can see all of downtown and then walk to Chinatown for lunch/dim sum. Downtown is easily walkable and you can see

Battery Park (which is where the ferry to Ellis Island is located)
Memorial to the World Trade Center
Trinity Church
Wall St.
Ground Zero
from there walk east to see the Federal/Court Buildings and contiue a couple of blocks from there to Chinatown.

That pretty much covers downtown in a day.

I'd also suggest that the Met would be a great way to spend another day or just a few hours. It is a donation so you can give whatever you can it is not a set price.

From there you can walk through Central Park and find Strawberry Field on the West Side.

Check the websites for Lincoln Center and Central Park for concerts for the dates you are here.

Have a GREAT time.

Oh, wrong Met. When I read nytraveler's post, I thought he was speaking of the Metropolitan Opera. Coincidentally, they're performing Swan Lake there at the same time of my trip. Now I realize you mean the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'll be sure to check it out while I'm in the Central Park area.