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| That's me crossing Brooklyn Bridge |
New York had been on my list of places to visit for ages but the cost involved had put me off. After friends told us their teenage boys had loved Manhattan, I decided to see if we could do it at a reasonable price in the school holidays.
Flights
I started planning in September. First I checked skyscanner.com for an idea of prices. (Tip: Select 'whole month' and 'nearby airports' to get a good overview and spot the best prices.) Bloody hell! 900€ per person Madrid to JFK. I set up a price alert for a couple of possible dates combinations just in case a bargain came up. Over the next few weeks I received emails with all manner of proposals involving 25-30 hours of travel with multiple stop-offs in various eastern and former USSR countries. Then one day up came a Delta flight, 7 hr direct MAD-JFK for 450€. I couldn't believe my eyes! I immediately rang the bank to get my credit upped in order to pay for the tickets and jumped right into the adventure with boots on.
Some days later, having browsed Booking.com and Airbnb for an idea of the accommodation, I realised that I may have bitten off more than I could chew and that the considerable 1350€ of the flights was actually going to be a small part of the cost of the holiday. I had booked them thinking if we are going to go all the way to the USA we should stay as long as possible as we may never get the chance to go back, so the flights were 19th July - 3 August. 16 nights. The last time I was in the States travelling down the West coast I used Motel 8 which was really cheap. Not so in the Big Apple! The cheapest, tacky hotel room for 3, with shared bathroom and no breakfast in Manhattan will set you back around 150$ a night for a triple in summer. 16x150 = 2400$. Eek!
So then to Airbnb. Some feel uneasy about using Airbnb or similar websites. I have used them many times and never had a bad experience. On the contrary, hosts have given us tours of the area, free welcome packs of local wine and cheese, lifts and valuable advice. Be sure to read the reviews, and if there aren't many then look at the information available about the reviewers. Make sure you read the conditions carefully also as some ask for large cleaning fees or non-refundable deposits.
Well it turns out NYC council have restricted Airbnb (and Uber) because of the effect on residents, now hosts cannot have properties solely as tourist lets; they have to occupy the apartment. My understanding is that hosts can let out a room in their house, but cannot by law let the entire apartment for less than 30 days. What does that mean in reality? It means the host usually lives there but moves out temporarily when you are there. There are a lot of rooms and apartments available, logically the further away from Midtown, the cheaper they are. But even 9 months before the holiday, I could see that the places were starting to get booked up.
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| our street in Brooklyn |
We ended up choosing a small one bedroomed apartment in Astoria, Queens, for 54$ a night for the first week, a bigger place in Brooklyn for the last 4 nights for 80$ and used booking.com for a couple of motels for our road trip 60$ a night. Total came to 900$ which is still mindboggling to me.
The fact that the owners live in the apartments meant they are full of their stuff. Good in that it means a well equipped kitchen, TV, air con (very important in July) etc. and a cosy feeling. Bad in that we had no cupboard space to put our own stuff, and it felt odd seeing other folks bathroom stuff and odds and ends everywhere. But it was worth it for the huge saving.
The location of your accommodation is affected by several factors. Whilst being out in Queens and Brooklyn allowed us to get a different perspective of real NY life, the daily travelling became a pain. At first it was fine, half an hour direct to from Astoria to Central Park. However, as time went on and we were visiting sights further afield, we found ourselves spending and hour and a half commuting (see below).
Travelling can't be avoided, and although we planned our sightseeing carefully to group visits geographically therefore minimising travel time, once there we couldn't help ourselves from going to see the most exciting places in the first few days.
I now think that it would have been worth paying extra for accommodation in the centre of Manhattan for a few days. I also wonder if it would have been cheaper to book a 2 week package holiday through a well known company as I have seen some very good deals. Of course that would have limited us to Manhattan and we really wanted to see more than just the city.
Getting around
NYC is a massive city, Manhattan is much, much bigger than you imagine, and although it is true that public transport is excellent, we really got fed up with the time we spend travelling every day. Many subway stations are massive labyrinths which involve traipsing up and down stairs and escalators for ages. It was baking hot outside, in fact there was a heatwave the first week, the subway stations were like ovens, but the trains and buses have air-con which requires you to carry a cardigan to avoid hyperthermia. Combined with jetlag, it was totally exhausting.
There are several options for paying, we chose to buy the 20 trip tickets which you can use for all the family. In hindsight it was a mistake. We spent a fortune. Much more convenient and probably cheaper, would have been the unlimited weekly ticket for 32$ per person.
During the second week we decided to use buses which may take longer due to traffic jams but are frequent, pleasant, easy to board and you get to see interesting places en route.
Info: http://web.mta.info/metrocard/mcgtreng.htm#payper
One of the nicest things about New York is how willing everyone is to help when they see you are lost or having difficulty with timetables and maps. Don't be afraid to ask for help.
Car hire
Traffic in NY is crazy. But we wanted to do a little road trip so we needed to hire a car. I spent weeks looking into various options and eventually found the best price with hotwire.com
You don't actually know which company you will be with until you get your confirmation but I got a Ford Fiesta for 5 days for 180$ which was about half what the main hire companies had quoted although I had to pay up front at the time of booking. Hertz added a hefty deposit on our credit card when we picked up the car at their office in La Guardia airport. Then we had a nightmare trying to get out of Queens. With the motorway wall-to-wall with traffic, it took us more than an hour to get to the Whitestone Bridge which is about 5 miles away. And a similar situation on the way back to return the car.
Another tip: Buy a road map. Trying to navigate using Google Maps was hopeless.
Conclusion
Despite hours and hours of researching and planning, we made mistakes. It is difficult to plan for trips like this. People who booked package holidays missed out on many of the fab the things we saw but had a great time seeing more of Manhattan than we managed to. We worked ourselves to the bone trying to see as much as possible and were exhausted. However, if I was going to plan the same trip in hindsight, I might have had a few days more on the road trip which was relaxing and tried to take things a bit more slowly in the city, accepting that it is impossible to see everything.
