Choose for a hotel with the best New York skyline views
Many tourists take a hotel in the middle of the city center. These are typically more expensive. The Hyatt Regency Jersey City on the Hudson‘s location’s a lot calmer and offers amazing views of the city skyline, given its waterfront location. One might argue that you’re missing the typical New York vibe as you’re not constantly woken up by car honking and other typical street noises – true. But with the New York Waterway ferry and PATH train stops only a few metres away, you’ll be in the centre and back before you know it.
Add a Starbucks and a City Diner with delicious food just around the corner – what else do you need?
Take a ticket on the hop-on hop-off bus
We ordered our tickets with Viator. They have different loops: Uptown, Downtown, Brooklyn & a night tour. It’s the perfect opportunity to discover the city that never sleeps at your own pace. You can also listen to the pre-recorded narration, providing further information as the tour continues. As its triggered by GPS, you get fun facts as you pass by certain sights during the trip.
Take the subway
The PATH railway system is so easy. As the “Exchange Place” stop was right next to our hotel, it took us only 5 minutes to get to the World Trade Center. Getting the tickets is really easy as well, just as you enter the station.
Make sure to visit these 5 + 1 highlights
Time Square
This is where we started the hop on – hop off bus tour and what better place to start from? This is how we imagined New York would look like. Great atmosphere.
Central Park
We spent about 3 hours at Central Park, strolling around and getting the perfect combination of brick buildings and greenery on camera.
One World Trade Center
Goose bumps when we visited the memorial, really. Impossible to imagine what would have taken place there 12 years earlier…
View from above – Top of the Rock
There’s typically 2 places to view New York City from above – Top of the Rock or Empire State building. We chose for the first one. We tried it twice – the first time a friendly lady at the counter warned us the weather wasn’t great (a lot of clouds higher up) and so advised us to come back the day after. Luckily we did!
Lady Liberty
Our visit to New York City was again a crash-visit. As usual, we made sure we got the highlights and of course the Statue of Liberty is one of those. Cruising to the Monument Statue Cruises is the only authorized official provider of tickets and tours to the Statue...
And if you have time left… Grand Central Station
Just so you can experience the surrounding that is used in quite a few movies in real life.
