New York

[Tony Angelino]

Morning all, we're heading for our firsr trip to NYC between Christmas and New Year and are considering using one of the Private Photography Tours. Basically, they send you a 'pro' photogropher who takes you on a 1/2/3 hour walking tour round various areas of the City and captures it for you..

https://phototrektours.com/best-of-new-york-2-hour...
https://www.getyourguide.co.uk/brooklyn-l2034/priv...

The basic thinking is if we organise something like this for the first morning we are there we would (hopefully) get somebody with good local knowledge who knows the best way to get around who can take us to plenty of the big sites quickly and we don't either have to have the usual photo of 2 out of 3 of us or mess with a selfie stick and a phone.

Plus we take some poor pics.

Anybody used one?
Good idea?
Pricey for what it is?
Risk of getting somebody who doesnt speak much English and have a communication barrier? #
Alternative suggestions?

[anonymous-user]

With only the teeniest bit of planning, working out a route between all the 'sights' is very easy - Manhattan is an absolute doddle to get around. The service you linked to is certainly not cheap, and of course you won't have much in the way of flexibility if the weather doesn't play ball on the day you've booked.

It also would appear to miss out on some of those iconic NYC locations (I only clicked on one link briefly, so forgive me if I'm spouting crap) - what about The Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island ferry, or a picture with lower Manhattan/Freedom Tower/Hudson behind you, taken from the Jersey City shoreline (only one stop from WTC under the Hudson on the Path), etc, etc?

I'd be spending a little time with Google and planning an itinerary, and rely on a selfie stick or friendly tourists/locals to take those important pictures for you - and spend your money on something more worth your while - it's not like they're aren't thousands of ways to do that in NYC!

I'm a regular visitor on business and know the place quite well - if I can help you plan, I'd be happy to do so. There are loads of folk on here who are regular visitors too, and some folk who are resident - they will likely offer some good insight shortly.

[RicksAlfas]

We used https://www.newyorktour1.com/one-day-new-york-city... for a walking tour.
It was excellent. Plenty of time for photos if required.

[Steviesam]

Just google the buildings/view you want and save the money.

Probably better photos than you would take anyway.

No need to go at all!

[Tony Angelino]

had ham said:

With only the teeniest bit of planning, working out a route between all the 'sights' is very easy - Manhattan is an absolute doddle to get around. The service you linked to is certainly not cheap, and of course you won't have much in the way of flexibility if the weather doesn't play ball on the day you've booked.

It also would appear to miss out on some of those iconic NYC locations (I only clicked on one link briefly, so forgive me if I'm spouting crap) - what about The Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island ferry, or a picture with lower Manhattan/Freedom Tower/Hudson behind you, taken from the Jersey City shoreline (only one stop from WTC under the Hudson on the Path), etc, etc?

I'd be spending a little time with Google and planning an itinerary, and rely on a selfie stick or friendly tourists/locals to take those important pictures for you - and spend your money on something more worth your while - it's not like they're aren't thousands of ways to do that in NYC!

I'm a regular visitor on business and know the place quite well - if I can help you plan, I'd be happy to do so. There are loads of folk on here who are regular visitors too, and some folk who are resident - they will likely offer some good insight shortly.

Thanks for the reply.

We have a loose itineray at the moment and are hoping to add more things to it. So far booked we have:

Statue of Liberty
NY Giants game
Broadway show
Top of the Rock
NYE bowling near Times Square

We ideally want some of the 'touristy' pics whilst we are there and thought that might be a decent way to do it, We have 4 nights from 27th December returning 1st January. Other things on the list to try and shoehorn in:

Ground zero
The Highline
Coney Island
Ice Skating (Central Park/Times Sq?)
Shopping
Brooklyn Bridge
Polar Bear dip on NYD

We need to narrow it down and plan further, we're not over fussed about fancy food - happy with streetfood/fastfood type stuff or drinking at all. We're staying in Hoboken NY, me the mrs and our 12 year old lad.

[satans worm]

Hi, I live and work in NYC and would say this
If you really want those photos fine, you m sure they will be cool and leave you a good memeory, but they are pricy they charge that amount each.
Re food, do not eat the street food! This is not Singapore!
If you can try these/ google them

Get burgers at shake shack , pizza at johns on bleecker, ramen at ippodu or momosan, bbq at hill country, hotdogs and poke ( weird combo ) at sons of thunder , soup dumplings at joe Shanghai , pastrami sandwich at Katz and Peruvian chicken at pio pio.
Great place to eat in Hoboken is the German beer Hall, very good prices and your think your in Germany, apart from general whooping and basebal caps everywhere
Hoboken is great

Walk the Brooklyn bridge but on a still day( it gets windy and cold when you are here)

Broadway shows cost a fortune, goto the booth in times sq and you can get same day discount tickets
Any sporting events also cost a lot
Forget Coney Island etc
Do the empire, rock, Central Park, grand central, wander the streets around noho, soho or anywhere south of 20th street
Stay away from mid town as much as poss!
Natural history and other museum great if the weather closes in
It’s very likely it will be cold and windy, come prepared!

Edited by satans worm on Wednesday 31st October 12:35

Edited by satans worm on Wednesday 31st October 12:39

[K50 DEL]

satans worm said:

Hi, I live and work in NYC and would say this
If you really want those photos fine, you m sure they will be cool and leave you a good memeory, but they are pricy they charge that amount each.
Re food, do not eat the street food! This is not Singapore!
If you can try these/ google them

Get burgers at shake shack , pizza at johns on bleecker, ramen at ippodu or momosan, bbq at hill country, hotdogs and poke ( weird combo ) at sons of thunder , soup dumplings at joe Shanghai , pastrami sandwich at Katz and Peruvian chicken at pio pio.
Great place to eat in Hoboken is the German beer Hall, very good prices and your think your in Germany, apart from general whooping and basebal caps everywhere
Hoboken is great

Walk the Brooklyn bridge but on a still day( it gets windy and cold when you are here)

Broadway shows cost a fortune, goto the booth in times sq and you can get same day discount tickets
Any sporting events also cost a lot
Forget Coney Island etc
Do the empire, rock, Central Park, grand central, wander the streets around noho, soho or anywhere south of 20th street
Stay away from mid town as much as poss!
Natural history and other museum great if the weather closes in
It’s very likely it will be cold and windy, come prepared!

Having just come back from my 11th trip to NYC in the last 15 years or so I would broadly agree with all of this.
Manhattan especially is a doddle to get around and the subway is cheap and easy to use if you do want to travel greater distances.

Bring good walking shoes, we averaged 12 miles a day for the 6 days we were there, it really is a walkers paradise.

In short, with a bit of planning you can see all the sights you've listed and a lot more besides in the time you have, I'll pop up my recent itinerary when I'm at home later (It was my sister's 1st time to NYC so we did a lot of the things that are doubtless on your list)

Where are you staying by the way?

[pmanson]

To add to this (as a one time visitor to NYC):

1) Walk the highline railway (one of the highlights for me)
2) Helicopter flights around Manhatten
3) Burgers at the Spotted Pig were very good

Best of all enjoy it! There is so much to do, i don't think you can have a bad time there. We came away thinking there is so much more to see than you can ever fit into two or three days

[Tony Angelino]

Thanks again for the replies, much appreciated. Just to address a couple of them:

• Reference ‘street food’, I meant fast food/nothing fancy stuff rather than specifically on the sidewalk! We’re not into fine dining or anything like that. Pizza places, burger places, deli’s etc suit us. Not fussed for late nights or drinking.

• We’re staying in the Hotel Hoboken.
• Top of the Rock, Broadway show, NFL, Statue of Liberty, NYE tickets all booked and paid for – no negotiation on these. With how they fall we’ve got from memory 1 full day and 3 ‘half’ days to fill with the other stuff.

• Happy and expecting to cover long distances on foot and take the subway.

We're still working out the best way from JFK to Hoboken - we don't have a transfer booked the moment. Flight gets in early/mid afternoon I think.

[K50 DEL]

Tony Angelino said:

Thanks again for the replies, much appreciated. Just to address a couple of them:

• Reference ‘street food’, I meant fast food/nothing fancy stuff rather than specifically on the sidewalk! We’re not into fine dining or anything like that. Pizza places, burger places, deli’s etc suit us. Not fussed for late nights or drinking.

• We’re staying in the Hotel Hoboken.
• Top of the Rock, Broadway show, NFL, Statue of Liberty, NYE tickets all booked and paid for – no negotiation on these. With how they fall we’ve got from memory 1 full day and 3 ‘half’ days to fill with the other stuff.

• Happy and expecting to cover long distances on foot and take the subway.

We're still working out the best way from JFK to Hoboken - we don't have a transfer booked the moment. Flight gets in early/mid afternoon I think.

Is that the W Hotel in Hoboken NJ?
I'm struggling to find a Hoboken hotel on Manhattan itself?

[anonymous-user]

The key for easy access to/from Hoboken (if it is actually Hoboken you're staying in) to Manhattan is the PATH train - Blue and Green lines (I think you're there for a weekend, when Green doesn't run) which give access to mid-town or WTC Interchange;



All details here https://www.panynj.gov/

Good app for all tube/trains/buses https://citymapper.com/nyc

JFK to Hoboken is a balls ache - depending on arrival time, an Uber might be easiest, otherwise it's Air Train to Jamaica, train to Penn station, short walk to PATH 33rd St station, then PATH to Hoboken, an hour and a half at least, I'm guessing. Would have been far easier to go into Newark, which is less than an hour (which of course is absolutely no help at all!).

As I said earlier, great photos of Lower Manhattan from the riverside area beside Exchange Place PATH Station.

HoBo on here lives in/around Hoboken and may be able to offer better advice.

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 31st October 15:09

[Tony Angelino]

Will reply later when home, thanks again.

Staying at W Hoboken.

thanks all.

[K50 DEL]

For my recent stay we chose to base ourselves in Jersey City, and faced the same question regarding getting there from JFK.... in the end, I hired a car from Budget, collected it at JFK and dropped it off the next morning in Jersey City before getting the PATH train into Manhattan... ISTR the total cost of this was <£40 so much cheaper than an Uber and far less stress than Air Train etc (I normally use Air Train and it's great if you're actually staying in the city but as Ham says above, it's a real faff to get into Jersey via that route.

As far as your daily commute from Hoboken to the City goes, having suffered the PATH train at rush hour a couple of times I would advise avoiding that (it's quick and cheap but makes the London underground seem quiet, one morning we had to wait for 8 trains before we were able to cram ourselves in!)

Instead, I would use the NY Waterways service that goes straight from Hoboken to the pier at Wall Street, it's a touch more expensive than PATH but much handier for Midtown and a really nice service.

[Gary C]

Tony Angelino said:

Morning all, we're heading for our firsr trip to NYC between Christmas and New Year and are considering using one of the Private Photography Tours. Basically, they send you a 'pro' photogropher who takes you on a 1/2/3 hour walking tour round various areas of the City and captures it for you..

https://phototrektours.com/best-of-new-york-2-hour...
https://www.getyourguide.co.uk/brooklyn-l2034/priv...

The basic thinking is if we organise something like this for the first morning we are there we would (hopefully) get somebody with good local knowledge who knows the best way to get around who can take us to plenty of the big sites quickly and we don't either have to have the usual photo of 2 out of 3 of us or mess with a selfie stick and a phone.

Plus we take some poor pics.

Anybody used one?
Good idea?
Pricey for what it is?
Risk of getting somebody who doesnt speak much English and have a communication barrier? #
Alternative suggestions?

dont know about that, but go on the hard hat tour of ellis island before they ruin it.

Get to walk through the abandoned hospital thats not been touched, great experience.

[Tony Angelino]

K50 DEL said:

For my recent stay we chose to base ourselves in Jersey City, and faced the same question regarding getting there from JFK.... in the end, I hired a car from Budget, collected it at JFK and dropped it off the next morning in Jersey City before getting the PATH train into Manhattan... ISTR the total cost of this was <£40 so much cheaper than an Uber and far less stress than Air Train etc (I normally use Air Train and it's great if you're actually staying in the city but as Ham says above, it's a real faff to get into Jersey via that route.

As far as your daily commute from Hoboken to the City goes, having suffered the PATH train at rush hour a couple of times I would advise avoiding that (it's quick and cheap but makes the London underground seem quiet, one morning we had to wait for 8 trains before we were able to cram ourselves in!)

Instead, I would use the NY Waterways service that goes straight from Hoboken to the pier at Wall Street, it's a touch more expensive than PATH but much handier for Midtown and a really nice service.

Thanks, hopefully the train may not be so bad with it being between Christmas and new Year?

Regarding the car, I've just had a quick google search and the cheapest I can find is around £90 so I'd probably just stick with either an uber or a transfer.

Good tip for the water service, thanks.

[bakerstreet]

I would recommend adding USS Intrepid to your list of places to go. Aircraft Carrier with the Space Shuttle on it. There is only a few places in the world where you can see a Space Shuttle so worth a visit IMO.

We went to NYC in Jan 2012 and loved it. We stayed opposite Madison Square Garden in a massive hotel which was pretty scruffy but we had a great trip. Weather was bitterly cold. It didn't get above 0C all week, but it really didn't matter. We just spent the week in jackets and woolly hats

[RicksAlfas]

bakerstreet said:

I would recommend adding USS Intrepid to your list of places to go. Aircraft Carrier with the Space Shuttle on it. There is only a few places in the world where you can see a Space Shuttle so worth a visit IMO.

We went to NYC in Jan 2012 and loved it. We stayed opposite Madison Square Garden in a massive hotel which was pretty scruffy but we had a great trip. Weather was bitterly cold. It didn't get above 0C all week, but it really didn't matter. We just spent the week in jackets and woolly hats

We went this April and it snowed!
It was very cold. Take all your gear and decent shoes. We had a spectacularly clear evening when we went up the Rockefeller Center. Amazing views. Well recommended. Do some research first though as you have to book I think.

Here's the Intrepid's A-12 with snow on its wings. Not its usual operating zone!

[Tony Angelino]

RicksAlfas said:

bakerstreet said:

I would recommend adding USS Intrepid to your list of places to go. Aircraft Carrier with the Space Shuttle on it. There is only a few places in the world where you can see a Space Shuttle so worth a visit IMO.

We went to NYC in Jan 2012 and loved it. We stayed opposite Madison Square Garden in a massive hotel which was pretty scruffy but we had a great trip. Weather was bitterly cold. It didn't get above 0C all week, but it really didn't matter. We just spent the week in jackets and woolly hats

We went this April and it snowed!
It was very cold. Take all your gear and decent shoes. We had a spectacularly clear evening when we went up the Rockefeller Center. Amazing views. Well recommended. Do some research first though as you have to book I think.

Here's the Intrepid's A-12 with snow on its wings. Not its usual operating zone!

This looks brilliant, thanks for the tip. Will try and make time to get there most definately.

Much appreciated fellas, keep them coming!

[98elise]

satans worm said:

Hi, I live and work in NYC and would say this
If you really want those photos fine, you m sure they will be cool and leave you a good memeory, but they are pricy they charge that amount each.
Re food, do not eat the street food! This is not Singapore!
If you can try these/ google them

Get burgers at shake shack , pizza at johns on bleecker, ramen at ippodu or momosan, bbq at hill country, hotdogs and poke ( weird combo ) at sons of thunder , soup dumplings at joe Shanghai , pastrami sandwich at Katz and Peruvian chicken at pio pio.
Great place to eat in Hoboken is the German beer Hall, very good prices and your think your in Germany, apart from general whooping and basebal caps everywhere
Hoboken is great

Walk the Brooklyn bridge but on a still day( it gets windy and cold when you are here)

Broadway shows cost a fortune, goto the booth in times sq and you can get same day discount tickets
Any sporting events also cost a lot
Forget Coney Island etc
Do the empire, rock, Central Park, grand central, wander the streets around noho, soho or anywhere south of 20th street
Stay away from mid town as much as poss!
Natural history and other museum great if the weather closes in
It’s very likely it will be cold and windy, come prepared!

Edited by satans worm on Wednesday 31st October 12:35

Edited by satans worm on Wednesday 31st October 12:39

We're off to NY in December for a long weekend staying a the Roosevelt. Where is good for breakfast on the go?

In London there are a multitude of chain and independent places you can grab a coffee and a bacon roll, does NY have similar places?

We want to be on the move early, then grab something to eat mid morning.

[anonymous-user]

98elise said:

In London there are a multitude of chain and independent places you can grab a coffee and a bacon roll, does NY have similar places?

Yes, and then some! Food on the go is part of NY culture - there are a myriad of places everywhere, more so than London I think. All sorts of cuisines, although bacon is much less ubiquitous, there are plenty of better alternatives for breakfast/brunch. Bagel is the way to go!

Edited by anonymous-user on Saturday 3rd November 12:07