NYC Itinerary Help
 

I will be traveling for business/pleasure with my mother and sister in the next couple of weeks. I'd like some help with building our visit.

Day One:
Arrive LGA to hotel.
Explore Upper East Side, Central Park, strolling down to Fifth Avenue area for shopping. (My mother needs to find a mother-of-the-groom dress, not the typical formal floor length dress, though. Any suggestions?)

Day Two:
Start day at Top of the Rock. St. Patrick's Cathedral. Go to WTC site. Time for Ellis Island (?) Broadway Show at night. I'd like to get tickets from the TKTS booth. Should we start the day in Times Square to ensure that?

Day Three:
I have business during the day. Mom and sister will do a sightseeing tour(?) and more shopping. My sister wants a knockoff purse from Chinatown (?).
Empire State Building at night for a different view or another play/show. I'd love to get Letterman tickets, but on-line it seems like only pairs get admitted. Is it worth even trying stand-by?

Day Four:
Flight doesn't leave NYC until 4pm. We have some time for something here, too. What time should we leave for the airport?

I know that I don't have any museums (except Ellis Island) on the list, but my sister is not really into that. I'd love to do the Met, but I don't think that we'll have time.

Day two if you must visit Ellis Island (your much faster option would be to ride the free Staten Island Ferry for outstanding views of the Statue of Liberty), be the first ones there in the morning. It will take you four hours to do this tour. The Staten Island Ferry would take around an hour round trip but you don't stop on the island.

Afterwards you could get your TKTS tickets at South Street Seaport. Usually no lines and a much faster option than Times Square.

Heading back uptown you maybe could squeeze in Top of the Rock and St. Patricks before your show.

If you do Ellis Island, you'll have to skip TotR and St.Patricks if you want to make it to the theater on time.

Either way, it will be a full exhausting day.

I was there last week and theyare tearing up the place where they sold tickets in Times Square. You have to go to the Marriott Hotel now.

You can purchase your tickets at the seaport ticket booth which makes better sense given that's much closer to the WTC site and Ellis Island departure sight. http://www.tdf.org/TDF_ServicePage.aspx?id=56

However I would suggest checking out theatremania.com and playbill.com and purchase discount tickts ahead of time. If one of you days are a weekend you may want to check out accomplicenewyork.com for a unique experience.

The Chinatown area to purchase assessories is Canal street. A good place for lunch too and you are next to little Italy which is little...

If you want to get a little art in with a great setting check our www.frick.org which is near the Metropolitan. Or you can go to the Met and pay as you wish and just do the highlights tour or check out a small portion for a couple of hours.

Ooops make that I second gotravel's suggestion to use the south seaport location to purchase tickets. Check out the hours too because they start earlier there then at the Marriot location.

My information is out-of-date so perhaps someone most current will expand this. The place for dresses used to be Lord and Taylor right on Fifth Ave.

lord and taylor is now a federated department store or whatever that group is that bought up everything. it is very much like every other major department store being supplied by the same buyers.

Yes and no on Lord & Taylor having "very much like every other major department store being supplied by the same buyers." We've found that the stores in NYC tend to have more and different choices from their suburban counterparts.

Yes - the stores in the city do have a much bigger selection that the suburban stores (since they're 4 or 5 times the size) and also focus more on sophisticated things versus sportswear (they have both but the proportions of dresses versus casual is different).

You could also try Saks a few blocks up Fifth for dresses.

I agree on the online buying of Broadway tickets. That way you both secure your show (cause the booths don't always have what you want) and save time (you don't want to spend your time in NYC queuing, do you). For some shows, the online discounts almost match the booths. Try Broadwaybox.com

How about Kleinfeld's for the dress? They are in Manhattan now:

http://kleinfeldbridal.com/

Don't know what kind of dress Mother wants or what size she is, but Loehmann's often has nice cocktail type things.