Hi all,

My fiancee and I are planning to goto New York for our honeymoon in September and have already started to kind of think about how we are going to get there, where we should stay, etc.

We are from New Brunswick, Canada so we would like to drive down ourselves instead of fly. We also want to do the following activities:

- Yankees game
- Giants game
- Broadway shows
- Brooklyn Zoo
- Central Park
- etc

One thing we are noticing is that the Manhattan hotels are very expensive, but I think that is where we would want to stay so that we are relatively close to everything. I don't really feel comfortable driving around to be honest, so what i'd really want is to drive somewhere close to New York and then be able to park my car somewhere safe for the week. Is there anywhere that I could do this? Perhaps an Airport parking lot?

Thanks all!

Coming from New Brunswick CA you're best driving route may be to pick up I84 through Connecticut. A good option for you may be to park at a Metro North RR station at Brewster, NY. There are 2 stations there; Brewster and Southeast. Both are easy to get to from I-84. I believe Southeast has about twice the number of parking spots. You can select a long term option and pay for however many days you need to. Fees aren't high at all.

http://www.mta.info/mnr/html/parking.htm

You can then take the RR right into NYC - Grand Central.
http://www.mta.info/mnr/ using the Harlem line.

Once you figure out where you are staying go to bestparking.com It will help you find the best and least expensive parking. Note you can select long term. Airport parking is not cheap!!

In terms of seeing the Yankees--assuming it is again a tight season ( in terms of getting into the playoffs) tickets are going to be hard to come by and expensive!!

There are 3 NYGiant games. I is opening day. Good luck getting tickets for the Giants!

You should start thinking of an exact hotel budget and figure out where you want to stay. After Labor Day ( 1st Monday in Sept) prices of hotel ARE expensive. It would be good if you can book something 100% refundable now and continue to look as it gets closer.

There are 3 NYGiant games. I is opening day. Good luck getting tickets for the Giants!
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If they play at all. If you think hotel rooms are expensive, wait until you pay a scalper.

I think there is only daily parking availbale at Southeast which creates an obvious problem.

At Brewster try one of the commercial alternatives.

I assume you are interested in the Bronx Zoo, which is the large famous NYC zoo. There is also a small zoo right in Central Park. (There is a small Brooklyn Zoo which I would not recommend for a first-time visitor.)

Tickets for a Yankees game will be easier to come by than Giants tickets.

Check www.yankees.com for schedules. I expect Tue or Wed night game against either Baltimore or Tampa Bay will have tickets available, even if the Yankees are doing very well. Those 2 teams just don't draw sell out crowds. Even if they are sold out there's a flourishing secondary market through brokers like www.stubhub.com

Parking at Chelsea Piers is very reasonable.

If you didn't want to drive in or park in NYC, you could drive to Mystic, CT from NB and spend a night in a great seaport town.
Park your car near the Amtrak station free or cheap and take the train into NYC. $36US PP each way. Having a car in NYC can be a pain if you don't like city driving and paying parking fees on top of high hotel fees.

The question is how far do you want to drive and how much traffic do you want to avoid. You might also want to consider how easy you would like it to be to get on and off the highway.

Amtrak has good train service from points north of NYC. It is especially good on the northeast corridor that runs from Boston to New York. Major stations along the way like Providence, New Haven, and Stamford all have a benefit in terms of ease of train and parking.

You're not going to need you car in New York. So parking north of the city and taking the train in makes sense. Really just a function of how far you want to drive and cost of parking at the various options.

As Aduchamp stated, Giants tickets are very expensive for a single game. Most fans had to purchase a seat license in addition to the cost of game tickets. To the extent there are tickets for sale, they will be marked up significantly that early in the season.

BTw, with any suggestions like Brewster, NY I would suggest you recognize that stations like Brewster that have a high number of daily commuters often have limited parking facilities and aren't designed for multi-day parking. Larger stations connected to Amtrak will often have multi-level parking facilities and provisions for longer term parking.

Or you could drive to New Haven, CT and take Metro North in for $30 round trip. It has a very large garage and cheap parking rates.

There's a parking garage on West 44th and 6th. Entrance on 44th between 6th and 5th on the right, very close to 6th avenue. Super cheap, even with it being in Midtown. It's a huge structure and indoors.

Alternative would be to drive over the George Washington and Park somewhere uptown. We have a garage two blocks away on Haven Avenue and 176th street that is VERY inexpensive and underground so covered parking. You can then take a one block walk to 175th and Fort washington to take the A express anywhere you want to go. When our friends visit it's where they park. If you'd like the name, let me know. I'll be walking the dogs past it tomorrow!

44th and 6th garage is called the Hippodrome.

As Ryan said, it all depends on how far you want to drive. I'm curious to know if you intend stopping/sightseeing along the way. That might have a big effect on best options. In addition to good train service from say Boston, there's also cheap bus service from there on megabus.com and boltbus.com

Metro North is the commuter train that runs north of the city. If you click on their map on any station, it will give you info on the parking garages. http://www.mta.info/mnr/html/mnrmap.htm

To get even closer to Manhattan than Amtrak or Metro North, there's $10/day parking at the Port Imperial ferry terminal in Weehawken, NJ run by nywaterway.com You can then either take their ferry over to Manhattan (pricey but a nice way to travel) or there are buses along that road that are cheaper than come into Port Authority bus terminal.