Visiting New York City
However, even for regular visitors, things do change … the World Financial Center is now Brookfield Place, the Oculus is fully open, reservations are no longer needed as they once were at the 911 Memorial, and new hotels, new restaurants, new attractions are popping up continuously, while too many are disappearing. Here, on the pages of VisitNewYork.com, the official visitor information site of the Associated Visitors Bureaus, you will find honest and disinterested reviews and advice about many of them.
For first-time visitors who might wonder about its size, and the difficulty of getting around in the City, Gotham is an easily manageable destination. If you’ve heard that the natives are frosty, or that the city is too big, it might be from someone who just wanted to find a way, without boasting, to tell you that he or she had been there.
The numbered Avenues run north and south and the numbered streets run east and west (the even-numbered streets go east, toward the East River, and the odd go west toward the Hudson), and in a day or two, you might find yourself giving directions to other visitors who have just arrived.
And, in any case, do not wait until your last day in the City to try the subways. If taking the first steps into a subway station feels a little intimidating, the second trip will not scare you at all, and if you wait until the last day of your trip, you’ll wish you hadn’t been wasting your time and money on taxicabs. New York City’s subways are generally the easiest, fastest, and least expensive way to get from uptown to midtown to downtown, and taxicabs and Uber and Lyft are for trips from the east side to the west. However, first-time visitors, or visitors with young children, would be well-advised to avoid the busier subway stations in transportation hubs near Times Square, and at train and bus stations around the morning and evening rush hours.
Visit New York endeavors to be a source of good, insightful and disinterested advice about where to stay and how to navigate the City in order not to waste limited time spent there, and you can easily make your New York City hotel reservations on this site.
Editors’ Hotel Picks
