Six days in New York

We arrived in NY on September 11. Here, just like Washington, D.C., there was no noticeable drama on the street because of the date. We stayed two nights at a friend’s place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and then moved to Roosevelt Island to spend four nights in an AirBnB place, hosted by a gay couple. Roosevelt island is a quiet oasis between Manhattan and Queens, just one subway stop or a cable car ride from Manhattan.

We bought NY Passes which grants access to dozens of commercial attractions plus discounts on some more items as well as a very useful pocket size guide book. Having paid 150 € makes you want to make the most of the card, so we tried to pack a lot in those six days, still leaving room for relaxation and improvisation. I think it's also psychologically less stressful to use the card at the cash register instead of always paying. There are several other passes on the market such as Citypass (which we had months ago in Toronto).

We made a plan for 4 of the 6 days and  followed it with some improvisation.

We also bought weekly passes for the public transport. Subway is the only right way to move between places in New York. It's fast and safe, if not clean (rats on the stations) nor comfortable. You see the locals in their natural habitat. Sometimes you get to enjoy artistic acts of varied quality on board the trains. A really cool act was couple of guys doing break-dance and acrobatics to loud music.

Below is our actual visit history with my totally subjective ratings on Angry Birds scale (1 to 3 stars, *** being awesome) I have only rated places where you need to pay to get in.

Day one 

Top of the Rock (**) is a scenic view from the roof of the Rockefeller Center. It's a more quiet alternative to Empire State Building and the views are great. Afterwards, we had a tour in NBC studios (*) since it's in the same building, not that we were familiar with the Saturday Night Show that seemed to be the main focus of the tour. At night we went out drinking in Brooklyn.

Central Park from Top of the Rock. The weather was not ideal.

Brooklynites standing in line for discount tattoos at 1 am on the Friday, 13th

Day two

We took a lengthy subway ride to northern Manhattan to see The Cloisters Museum and Gardens (***). This is a huge collection of medieval European artifacts plus there was an awesome audio installation with 40 speakers representing a huge choir. I can very much recommend the place and the installation which is there until Deceber 8, 2013.

The next stop was Museum of Modern Art (**), which we had to run through due to our next appointment with our AirBnB hosts. I was not very impressed by MoMa, but the design section was pretty cool. There was a school desk that can stand half a ton of concrete falling on it, while being made of simple steel and board. On the other end of the wow-scale there was pee and poo with other body fluids on display.

Day three

More of the emperor's new clothes type of "art" experience at Solomon R. Guggenheim (**) museum. After waiting in line for 45 minutes, the "installation" of a rectangle on the wall in a dark room was utterly disappointing. I liked the works of Picasso, though.

Guggenheim is located in a nice, posh neighborhood of Upper East Side

Our passes entitled us for a 3-hour bike rental near Central Park. The bikes of Central Park Bike Tours and Rentals (**) were not of great quality but the park itself is a very refreshing place. There are performances to enjoy, boats to rent and even a zoo and a lake. I think it's a great idea to have a huge park in the heart of a busy city. Be advised, there's only one direction to cycle, which means you can't turn back.

In the evening we ventured to Little Italy where there was a huge festival going on, San Gerrano I think. We had dinner in next-door Chinatown in a popular place Joe's Shanghai which was recommended by the travel book Lonely Planet. Woody Allen was dining in the next table but people pretended to be cool about it.

Huge crowds at the festival in Little Italy.

Day four

It's Sunday and we went to Brooklyn Tabernackle to hear some gospel singing. It's a huge, theater-like church with floor and balcony levels and thousands of seats, silver screen for lyrics and bible verses (and to show the minister) and podcasting capability. Something like 80% of churchgoers were black. After a lot of singing, standing and hands in the air by some, came the bible-thumping part. Some people started to leave after an apparent overdose of Jesus. I'm pretty much an agnostic but I take religious ceremonies as an experience. Shaking hands with and giving hugs to thy neighbour is an interesting community-bonding ritual that I've never witnessed in Lutheran churches in Europe.

Next thing was a ride with New York Water Taxi (**) from Brooklyn to Battery Park, pretty much a transport from a to b, no great adventure there. The havoc wreaked by Hurricane Sandy in the Battery Park had not yet been all fixed. We walked to 9-11 Memorial (***). It's very impressive although not completely finished. The new World Trade Center buildings around the Ground Zero were also just being finished.

Around the two waterfalls, which show the outline of the collapsed buildings, the names of the 3003 victims of both the 1993 and 2001 attacks are carved in stone.

Day five

We got up early to catch a walking tour on Wall Street (**). Our tour guide was a former banker, now trading part time on her on behalf. I think the tour would have benefited from audio equipment as it was hard to hear the lady in the outside, even in our small group of eight people. (Or maybe I need a hearing aid.)

Next we went to 9-11 Tribute Center (***), where you see some of the artifacts, recordings and stories of the attacks. I bought one of my few souvenirs: the 9-11 Commission Report as a comic book! After a healthy lunch at Burger King we took the subway to Pier 83 and took a fun 30 min speedboat ride on The Beast (***) by Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises.

The new WTC tower is 1776 feet tall in honor of year of the independence.

Statue of Liberty, pictured from the speedboat. We did not go on the island or into the statue itself as it's not part of the NY Pass attractions.

After speedboating we split up to see different things. (After spending so much time together during the last months, having just a few hours "holiday" is a healthy thing and good for the relationship.) I made an unplanned quick-visit to Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum (**), featuring a cold war era submarine, carrier, Concorde, lots of military aircraft and a the space shuttle Enterprise (actually an atmospheric test orbiter that didn't go to space). Again, due to our schedule, I had less time than I would have needed to fully explore Intrepid.

We met up to visit Museum of Sex (*). It was a rather short experience as those things tend to be... Joking aside, there were basically only three exhibitions of which one was an uninteresting one about an artist I'd never heard of, another of animal sexual behavior. Third one was keyword analysis about the kind of porn people are looking for on the internet.

Next we rushed to Empire state building (**) before a scheduled dinner with my aunt. The place was extremely crowded at sunset and we were in a hurry but the views are very nice. In the same building there is an outdated NY Skyride show (*) which is pure waste of time. We chose it because it is one of the Pass attractions. Having insufficient time, we luckily had already enjoyed skyscraper views on Rockefeller Center as well as in Toronto and Chicago. After the dinner in Hell's Kitchen district we enjoyed the huge advertisement screens and the hustle and bustle of Times Square.

View to north/northwest from Empire State Building at dusk

Day six 

On our last day we again went to see different thing. I went to Madame Tussaud's (**) wax museum. The figures are very life-like, especially seen in front of their eyes. But again, the other visitors somewhat diminish your own experience just by being there, nothing to do about it. I went to see the hip Greenwich Village district as the last thing before getting our bags from Roosevelt island and heading for the JFK airport and our flight on an Singapore Airlines A380 superjumbo (***).


Final analysis

New York is HUGE as are many of the attractions. The traffic is crazy and people like to honk a lot. Take the subway! It's easy like this city, just remember to take some time off in the more quiet places like Central Park every now and then.

In general, when visiting a museum, you should check on the home page what there is to see and what you want to see; you might find out there's nothing to see. Also be advised, most big-name places are infested with other tourists. The dilemma with multi-choice passes is that you have a financial incentive to go to as many places as possible. That's when you easily allocate too little time for visits. On the other hand, passes give you structure, a guideline, if you feel overwhelmed by options.

If there's two things I recommend to do in New York, go see the 9-11 Memorial (that's the site, not the 9-11 Tribute Center) and Central Park. It's recommended to make a reservation at 9-11 site but you should get in by standing in line as well.