A girlfriend and I will stay in New York Apr. 1- 5. I wanted to book on Priceline, but didn't know which area to choose for optimum New York City 4-day sight-seeing, shopping rampage. Thanks!

Do you know about www.biddingfortravel.com? It is a good place to start for bidding tips and advice. There are a few really nasty hotels that you could get on priceline - so rather than choose an area first you might want to look at biddingfortravel for some strategy.

I would recommend staying midtown, particularly the Times Square area. Midtown has all the great department stores and lots to see and do. Times Square is at the heart of that area and there are hundreds of hotel options. We stayed at the Crown Plaza in September and loved the location. Have fun.

Hotwire can also be very good for zeroing in on a nice hotel at a cheap price - see www.betterbidding.com for both Hotwire and Priceline tips.

Agree that midtwon is best for traditional department store shooping. for more upscale shopping try the upper east side, especially Madison aveneue. For discounts try Century 21 and other downtowns sports.

for a hotel I would take anything except Times Square. Granted it has a bunch of budget hotels, but its noisy, crowded, fairly tacky (tons of the cheapest chain restaurants and icky t-shirt shops) and full of nothing but other tourists. I would try for other midtown hotels, or upper west side, for a much more pleasant neighborhood.