My husband and I just got back from about 5 days in NYC. We left Kansas in the evening of December 29th and flew back the late afternoon on Jan. 4th. Here is my trip report, which I'm not that great at writing, but I figured might help some people.

Dec 29th: We somehow missed all the delays from the weather and arrived only an hour later than scheduled, 11pm, at LaGuardia. We didn't check any bags and were downstairs trying to find a place to buy a metro pass in about 15 minutes. We landed in D terminal and were told we had to go to B terminal to get a pass, which wasn't a big deal because there is a free shuttle between terminals. We then got on the M60 bus that headed to Manhattan. The bus was packed! This bus crossed path with muliple subway paths north of Central Park. We were headed to the Days Inn in the Upper West Side and made it there about 2 hours after landing. Our change from bus to subway in upper Harlem at 12:30am went smooth and we never felt unsafe (even though our mothers were somehow worried haha) because there were always a lot of people around.

Days Inn UWS Review: The location was really great, right next to a subway stop and near many shops. The room was decent sized but was in need of a renovation and a through cleaning. The bed was pretty comfortable for the type of hotel it was and the bathroom was nice. We could never figure out how to turn the heat down so we always had the window fan running. We could only get wireless in the lobby. The hotel seems very popular with Europeans and groups of friends traveling together. I wouldn't stay there again unless we were staying on NYE (like we were) and everything else in Manhattan was over $250 a night.

December 30th: For breakfast Taj Bagels which was right down the street, so we headed there. We found the bagels to be very tasty, I loved the everything bagel. After this we took the subway to Central Park and walked down 5th Avenue. The city was packed! There were lines to get into most the stores on 5th Avenue (or at least the one's most people can afford). After this we ate lunch at The Australian. The food was pretty good but prices a bit high for lunch, they did however have a KSU discount for the Pinstripe Bowl, of $10 pitchers which was a great deal. After this we headed on the subway to Yankee Stadium for the real reason we were in NYC, the Pinstripe Bowl! Yankee Stadium was very pretty but still can't believe the cost it took to build it! My husband loved the Yankee Museum in the stadium, and we loved the game until the very end when KSU ended up losing. For dinner this evening we headed to the Heidelburg on the Upper East Side. They sure did have some good German food! We ate way too much and walked back through a dark and empty Central Park, we weren't sure if it was safe as nobody was around so we walked fast!

I'll come back later with more days and hopefully sometime post a link to some photos we took.

You were probably lucky that you didn't meet anyone in Central Park that late at night. Next time, DON'T walk through Central Park after dark!!!

Glad you had a great time and come back and visit when you have time, there is so much more to see.

Your team got screwed on that 2-pt conversion!!!!

travelbuff is 100% right about the park after dark!

You are doing great! More please.

I was also at the game....and, speaking as a Syracuse fan, I agree with bmw732002 about Kansas State getting screwed on that penalty.

How late at night was it. I would take the bus across the park if later than about 11 (in the winter) the summer really isn't an issue - there are so many people around.
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Yes, that Days Inn does get a lot of European tour groups - because it always has very low rates - and european's hotel expectations tend to be different than those of Americans. And in older buildings you tend to get all sorts of eccentricities - in heating and cooling, plumbing noises etc. - that they are used to since most of their hotels are old - and usually not built as hotels.

If you like the neighborhood there are much nicer places that are reasonable rates most of the year.

bmw732002: I have to agree with you, but what do you do? Other than that it was a great game.

After that night we walked around Central Park, or took the subway, to our hotel! We walked really fast as soon as we realized we probably shouldn't be there at night and then tried to walk along a road for part of it.

December 31, aka NYE: This morning we had tickets to the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular at Radio City. The Rockettes were really good and the nativity scene amazing. Overall though, probably only half to 3/4 of the program was interesting to us. I'm glad we got 50% off tickets and didn't pay full price. After that we walked through Times Square (which had people already waiting to watch the ball drop) and to the Chrysler Building, my favorite building in NYC. We decided to go to Papaya King for lunch. My husband really liked the hot dogs (I didn't think they were that special), but I loved the Papaya juice! After lunch we headed to the MET. Their Egyptian collection was amazing! I also really liked their European paintings. I thought the entrance price of $20 was a little steep, but it was "recommended" so you could pay less, and the museum was huge! I wish we would have had more time but it was closing early for NYE. My book told me the MoMA was having free night so we went to see if it was really true. Sure enough, it was free from like 5-8 that evening, score! There was only 1 floor I really wanted to see so paying the $40 for both of us seemed like a lot but us and a million others got in for free! Thanks Target They had tons of Van Gogh's and Monet's, it was awesome. We left and had dinner reservations at Bella Luna in the UWS. They had a fixed meal, which was fine if you like what they had. The service was amazing (we ended up leaving with 8 free drinks between the 2 of us) which were probably partially put in the fixed meal price, but it left us leaving happy! We also got NYE party attire and listened to a live jazz band while watching the ball drop on the tv. Much better than standing out in the cold with no alcohol for many hours.

Jan 1: Happy New Year! Today we slept in and drug ourselves out of bed for the noon check out time. We were checking out of our Days Inn and moving to the Hampton Inn Times Square South. What a great decision.

Hampton Inn Times Square South: Amazing hotel compared to the Days Inn. It was a brand new hotel (within a year or two I would say). Our room was a pretty good size and everything was new and clean. The bed was comfortable and it had a glass large shower (no tub). The whole hotel had free wireless and free printing at their computers. We also had free breakfast and around the clock coffee/hot chocolate. It was also very near Times Square and several subway stops. Would stay there again.

We decided to try to head to Brooklyn to eat at the famous pizza place by the bridge, forgot the name. Well they weren't going to open for an hour and there was already a line of 60ish people so we headed to the park on the river. There was a great view of the Manhattan skyline so we took lots of photos and walked across the Brooklyn bridge. Watch out for bikes on there, my husband got hit from behind! It was so busy, and due to the snow, only half of the walking area was cleared off. We ended up walking all the way to Lombardi's in Little Italy to eat lunch. We were a little unimpressed. We were looking for NY style pizza and I felt like that was more Italian style, which was fine, but having been to Italy and not NY, I wanted NY style! That evening we went up Top of the Rock. The line to go up was only about 10 minutes and the view from the top at night was spectacular.

nytraveler: It was right around 11, didn't know about the bus that ran through there, that would have been much easier!

We really loved the UWS and would stay in that neighborhood again, just not at that hotel. The main thing I didn't like about the Days Inn as it wasn't very clean. That was the main difference between that and the places in Europe we have stayed, maybe we had good luck, but everywhere we stayed in Europe was very clean. That and for a day only 1 of 4 very slow elevators were working so my husband ran up 11 flights more than once to get forgotten items.

lindy27:

Would you take the bus into the city if you had to do it over? It probably saved you $'s but very time consuming.

Sounds like you had a lot of fun and always interesting to read how people handle a visit to NYC - thanks for sharing.

Sandy

SandyBrit: We took a different route back to the airport, where we took the subway to Queens and just took the bus the last mile or so. I would do that way again, but I wouldn't do bus M60 to get to Manhattan again.

Jan 2nd: Today was our Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island day. Before we left I looked up base and museum tickets and both the 2nd and 3rd were open all day so I figured I'd wait until we knew the weather to pick which day, big mistake. When I looked Saturday morning both Sunday and Monday were booked. I really wanted to go inside the Statue of Liberty so we decided to get a ferry from New Jersey because all the NYC ones wouldn't accept access inside. We took the subway to the WTC and transferred to the PATH to New Jersey. Once in New Jersey we took the subway to Liberty State Park where we walked about 20 minutes to the ferry terminal. In all it took 1.5 hours to get there. So I came into this day being slightly mad at New Jersey for hogging all the tickets even when NYC ran out, but I really didn't enjoy my 30 minutes in New Jersey haha We got on our 11am ferry to Ellis Island where we had booked audio tours. I'm glad we got an audio tour and we toured all of Ellis Island before heading to the Statue of Liberty. One thing about ferries from NJ was they only came every 40 minutes, instead of every 20 like NYC, so we wasted a lot of time waiting for ferries. I am glad we got to go inside the Statue of Libery to see the museum and climb up the base. To return back to NYC we took the NYC ferry to Ellis Island and then back to NYC. By this time it was already 5. We decided to head to the King Tut exhibit up by Times Square. We had tried to see what we thought was this exhibit in Munich in 2009, when really it was not and everything was "reconstructed" aka fake (so fake it was like gold foil with a horrible paint job), so we had to see the real thing! I am glad we finally got to see this exhibit. After this we decided to head up to John's Pizzeria near Times Square, and we really enjoyed it! That was more what I had imagined for NYC pizza. We ended the day walking through Times Square, which by the way isn't as neat as I'd imagined. All chain stores and restaurants filled with too many people.