After a sleepless 12 hour over night Greyhound stint, stuck sitting next to the bathroom, Manhattan can seem a little daunting the first time you see it from a distance. And from there, it only gets worse. You climb off the bus into the August heat, trying to find the right Subway entrance. You have you map, your hostel reservation and the driving need to experience everything “New York”.
Whatever your actual itinerary looks like, bus or plane, hostel or hotel, weekend or several weeks, New York can be a little overwhelming on your first visit. Here are a few tips to maximizing your first trip in NYC and keeping your wits about you. I’ve kept frugality in mind since I was just about broke when I got to New York.
1. You won’t learn to navigate Manhattan if you stay hidden inside your room. When I was in New York I stayed in a run down hostel, in a room with a tiny window and no fan. In the middle of August. It was horrible to be in and smelled like curry and peanut butter. I found a cockroach in the bathroom. It was perfect. I never wanted to be there for any reason which motivated me to spend all of my time wandering around and taking in the sights. Taking a break in the room was never an option. Even the Subway was preferable since it had air-conditioning. While you don’t necessarily need to book the worst rated hostel you can find, but consider the fact you’re not in the city to enjoy a nice room. NYC is big and scary but hiding in your room won’t help you learn the city.
2. Get the New York City Pass if you’re planning to go to most of the major tourist attractions. If you end up going to even half of them you’ll have saved yourself quite a bit of cash. A lot of the bigger sites also have special fast-tracked line ups for people who have their tickets already which is a huge time saver (especially at the Empire State Building).
3. Spend your evenings in Central Park. Assuming you’re in NYC in the summer, Central Park offers the perfect place to relax and cool your heels after a long day of roaming the city. It’s a great place to people watch and grab a late night pretzel or slice from the surrounding shops for a picnic dinner. If you’re especially into getting a romantic New York experience, make sure to catch the lightning bugs coming out as soon as dusk hits. Central Park is like the eye of a hurricane, a little rectangle of calm in the middle of a hectic city. If it’s good enough for the hardened New Yorkers to use, it’s good enough for even the most frazzled tourist.
4. The Staten Island Ferry gets your reasonably close to the Statue of Liberty. I had a discount ticket for an actual Statue tour, but it was almost four hours long. I just wanted to see the statue, not learn everything about it and be stuck on the island for four hours wasting time with a bunch of people wearing fanny packs. After asking a nice agent at the ferry terminal (who made my friend and I imitate Terrance and Philip from South Park, because we’re Canadian) let us in on the fact you can easily see the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry and, best of all, it’s FREE!
5. At least make yourself a rough plan before you go. I’m not a fan of the over-planning but if when I went to NYC I only had three days and I had quite a few places I wanted to hit up. The night before we left my travel partner and I sketched out a rough map of the city and placed all the places we wanted to go onto it. Using a highly technical “circling” system, we grouped the destinations into three days. Manhattan offers a lot and if you don’t employ some sort of planning you’ll end up spending a lot of time running around and catching the Subway and trying to get all over the place. Try and roughly group where you want to go according to where the are located so you can do them all in one shot rather than going back and forth.
6. Give yourself at least an afternoon just to wander around aimlessly. Try to do this as soon as possible in your trip to give yourself some pace of the city without over-thinking where your are trying to get to. Let yourself fall into the pace of the city, learn some of the landmarks, how to navigate if you have a map, and just wander. It won’t be a total waste of time either. Guaranteed you’ll see some attraction or building you forgot to put on your itinerary. If I hadn’t spent some time aimlessly wandering the the streets I would have missed the Central Library, Grand Central Station, Wall Street and the Flat Iron Building altogether.
7. Pick and choose which museums you really want to see. New York has hundreds of museums to chose from, even aside from the bigger name ones like The Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and the Guggenheim. If you have a limited amount of time you might want to choose just one or two or you could find yourself spending your entire trip inside museums. The Met and the Museum of Natural History can each easily consume five or six hours of your day on their own if you truly want to appreciate them and get your money’s worth. Considering the sheer amount of places you can go in New York and everything there is to do, make sure you are setting a realistic amount of time for museums.
8. Don’t get your hopes up about everything you go to do and see. New York is built up as a giant romantic metropolis teaming with interesting things to be discovered. There’s supposed to be excitement around every corner. Reality strikes quick though, and you need to be prepared for that. Not everything is going to meet your expectations. You will stand in line for at least at hour at the Empire State building only to realize the deck is so full you can hardly see over the ledge. The World Trade Centre site will look more like a construction zone than a memorial site. You probably won’t understand most of the art in the Guggenheim. Don’t let the occasional disappointment turn you off of enjoying the rest of the city, these things are to be expected. New York has some big hype surrounding it and not every aspect is going to live up to your expectations.
9. It might be tempting to stick with what you know and grab Starbucks and McDonald’s but eat at the local places. I’ll admit I was pretty sick on my last night in the city and chicken nuggets seem to contain some sort of Pepto Bismal medicinal properties, at least as far as my stomach is concerned, so I opted for for the Golden Arches. Aside from being sick, it was my least favourite meal during my stay. Between warm pretzels, fresh garlic bread from pizzerias and fresh fruit from a local market, your common fast food joint just isn’t going to cut it. Make sure aside from eating you stay hydrated too!
