Nightdreamer’s Guide to New York City: Tourist Spots

You may now breathe a sigh of relief. Finally, after having to put up with Nightdreamer’s ramblings about the most trivial things, he’s getting to the good part. Yep, that I am, but before I go on I have to say that I am not discouraging you from going to places not mentioned here; the beauty of Manhattan is that wherever you go, there’s always a place that thrusts itself into attention, be it churches with old-fashioned architectures, or stores that sell the most bizarre merchandises. I’ll only mention the tourist spots that I found unforgettable, for whatever reasons.

Museums

There are countless museums in NYC; I have read from one travel guide that says it’s entirely possible (and plausible) for one to spend an entire month going to every museums of NYC. What’s even more fascinating is that there are all types of bizarre museums here: there’s a museum of military equipments, museum of corpses, museum of sex, etc. Hmm, I wonder what the exhibitions are like for the lattermost.

Metropolitan Museum of Arts - or “The Met”, as New Yorkers like to call it. You know how everyone has his/her variation of “you have not experienced New York until you’ve been to _____”? In my book, you’ve wasted your trip to New York if you haven’t gone to The Met. Don’t bother giving me cries of “I’m not a museum type person!!!” Just do yourself a favor and go there at least once; I don’t care if what you do for a living has as much to do with art as soldiers with world peace. Can you imagine a vacation to Paris without a trip to Musee de Louvre? Same idea.

Met from outside (photo from wikipedia)

Its being one of the world’s largest art galleries may sound intimidating to people with no art bent, but don’t let that faze you. Most of the antiques aren’t too difficult to understand thanks to the informative placards near them, and they’re collected in orders that add to your understanding of the culture and the history of their places of origin. There are sections for arts from all parts of the world, and anyone is sure to find a favorite exhibit (mine is the section for India).

There is another branch of The Met called The Cloisters, which houses medieval arts. It is located at Harlem, which is far from The Met. Buses usually take an hour to go from The Met to The Cloisters.

Admission price: $20 is the suggested fee, but since it’s donation, you can merely pay $2

Location: 5th Avenue and 82nd Street

American Museum of Natural History - you can gain an encyclopedic understanding of world history from frequent visits to The Met, but you’d appreciate it more by seeing the replicated scenes of past days exhibited in American Museum of Natural History. It also collects replicas/preservations (I really couldn’t tell which) of animals from different parts of the world. There’s a planetarium connected to it too, and the shows are done in IMAX. An ideal place for both science and history buffs, but anyone can take delight in taking pictures of the dinosaur bones at the hallway. Like The Met, it’s an enormous museum, and I encourage multiple visits.

American Museum of Natural History from outside (photo from wikipedia)

Admission price: same as The Met

Location: Central Park West at 79th Street

Museum of Modern Art - the previous two museums can be enjoyed by anyone, but Museum of Modern Art requires a moderate degree of art appreciation. If you’re averse to intellectual-posturing visitors, stay very far from here. The exhibits can go from the contemporary art (which is splendid) to abstract art (which is, uh, interesting). Some of the most noteworthy exhibits are those from Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali and Frida. If those names mean nothing to you, though, then don’t visit. The abstract arts can get very abstruse, like they’d make you ask “How could anyone pass this off as art?!” There are “paintings” of a completely blue fill; how they manage to fetch millions of dollar let alone get exhibited is not a topic I’m willing to fixate on.

Museum of Modern Art (photo from wikipedia)

Admission price: $20, free on Fridays 4 p.m. – 8 p.m. when your only difficulty is fighting your way through a crowd.

Location: 11 West 53rd Street

Central Park 

If there’s something about the city that always bothers me, it’s the sense that the air I breathe there are nothing but assortments of fumes. Scenes of hulking skyscrapers may be nifty the first three times I look at them, but they don’t get any long term affection from me, not especially for trying to obscure the views of skies, replacing lively blues from beneath the cloud with drab grays made by nature-hating chemical factories. Cities look and smell like paint, and if they don’t have parks that momentarily drown out these joyless sights and smells, then I quickly grow weary of being there.

It’s no wonder I often have a desire to get out of Manila, even if only for a week. As for Manhattan, I may not imagine myself staying here for longer than a month without tiring of it, but at least I am content with the enormous park at its center, because it offers a brief reprieve from all the urban landscapes.

If you’ve been following my advice (bless you!) and have gone to The Met or Museum of Natural History, you might kind of notice that there’s a park connected or adjacent to it. Actually, you don’t have to go anywhere near both museums to see that there’s a park at the center of Manhattan, and it’s huge. Like, large enough to bury Godzilla and King Kong and their children huge. It’s impossible to miss unless you really suck at traveling.

There are various landmarks scattered all throughout the park, and they are themselves worthy tourist spots. Every part of Central Park is worth being lost in.

You know the movie Madagascar? It’s fictional in the worst sense of the word. There are no lions, zebras, giraffes and hippos in Central Park Zoo!

Times Square

I’ll let the picture do the talking:

That’s Times Square, one of the iconic images of New York City, where buildings double as projectors of very bright advertisement videos. It’s a very well-known tourist spot and, because it looks fanciful, has spawned imitators. After all, who doesn’t want to look like New York? Nanjing Road is Shanghai’s Times Square; Ximenting, Taipei’s. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that there are many more Times Square rip-offs elsewhere.

Aside from all the lights, though, Times Square is also notable for Broadway theatres, hotels and restaurants. I would argue that Broadway shows should be your only reasons for going to Times Square more than once; you don’t want to know how much it costs to stay here, and it’s not like there aren’t good restaurants elsewhere in Manhattan (gotta say that there’s a really cool Toys R’ Us here though, and it has a giant-sized roaring Tyrannosaurus from Jurassic Park). Sure, Times Square looks captivating, who doesn’t love bright and shiny places? Of course I recommend going there once (except in New Year’s Eve, in which case, try to go elsewhere) and taking pictures there, but unless you can stand places that are overly touristy, don’t go there another time without the intent of watching a Broadway musical, lest you come to me whining on how I haven’t warned you about how badly you can be harassed by rude tourists there. Times Square being a crowded place means that the people, especially tourists, behave very rudely – I think it’s part of human psychology that we behave in a more hostile manner when in a cramped setting. You’d get pushed around without being apologized. Just to overstate my case, because I love doing that, a friend of mine once told me that he hated New York City because he found New Yorkers very impolite. Perplexed because that contradicted with my opinions of New Yorkers – I find them quite friendly; if you want rude, ask me about Hong Kong or Taipei someday – I racked my brains as to how he could’ve possibly formulated that opinion. So I said, “You stayed in Times Square, didn’t you?” Zing! I was right, and then I told him that he was wrong in thinking that most of the people in Times Square are New Yorkers.

Brooklyn Bridge

This is a bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn. It goes a little over a mile, and walking across takes around 30 minutes. It’s a great exercise, and you’d be rewarded differently depending on which way you go: walk from Brooklyn and you’d get a great view of Manhattan; walk from Manhattan and there are pizzas and other restaurants where the bridge ends.

Empire State Building

Like how Brooklyn Bridge used to be world’s longest bridge, Empire State Building used to be world’s tallest building. Its main draw is the two observation decks where you can get a panoramic view of NYC; there’s an outdoor one at the 86^th floor, and a smaller indoor one at 102^nd, which requires additional fee, and is not always open to public. It was closed back when I visited in October 2005, and I just learned today (through reading travel websites) that it re-opened a month later. Sort of a bummer, but I can live without ever going to the 102^nd floor of Empire State Building. As a tourist attraction, Empire State Building is only worth one visit, and it does not belong to my list of “places you must have gone to before you die”. It’s up to you if you want to go here; I would’ve given it a more glowing recommendation had the admission been cheaper, and had it not required at least an hour of queuing time.

(photo from wikipedia)

Admission: I dunno; in 2005 it was between $15-20

Location: 350 Fifth Avenue

Statue of Liberty

If you haven’t heard of the Statue of Liberty then you must’ve fallen from a distant planet. Welcome to planet Earth, alien, and I hope you like eating durians, a fruit that I believe comes from a distant irradiated galaxy (and tastes like it too). Anyway, not a lot of people know this, but Statue of Liberty stands on an island called the Liberty Island, which has nothing in it except for the statue and the shops selling overpriced souvenirs with the likeness of the statue in it. Going to the island itself is easy – you have to buy tickets in Battery Park (and don’t forget that Liberty is a touristy place, so expect long lines) – but going inside the statue is a hassle. You need a reservation to go inside, and then you have to undergo security procedures before entering the museum by the statue’s pedestal. Even if it’s really cool to take a picture of you standing below the statue, the only reason I would recommend a trip to Liberty Island is that a ferry ride here (which costs $19) will also take you to Ellis Island, where you can visit The Immigration Museum, free of charge. Grumble all you want about immigration procedures; after watching the documentary shown in The Immigration Museum you’d understand that we have it easier than our ancestors, even if immigration officials may not necessarily have become more kindhearted.

Ellis Island

Admission: $19 for ferry ride, not sure how much it costs to get inside the statue, as I’ve never gone in

South Street Seaport

If, while being in another country, I was blindfolded and earplugged and got abducted to South Street Seaport, by the time my eyes and ears get uncovered, I wouldn’t know that this is part of NYC (until I see the Brooklyn Bridge, of course). South Street Seaport doesn’t look like the rest of Manhattan; elsewhere it’s mostly a steady stream of corporate high towers, but here you’ll see warehouses and piers. Those warehouses have since become establishments for shops and restaurants – fancy places for all you pesky mall-rats out there. Ferries that travel different places and cater to different needs are available. You can take a tour around Manhattan, or a tour around Statue of Liberty, or a meandering tour around anyplace the captain could think of while you spend 2 hours partying inside a boat made specifically for partying purpose. I won’t say it’s a definite must-see, but you can do worse by going to less desirable places *cough* Empire State Building *cough* than here, and some ferry packages include free admission to select museums or tourists attractions in Manhattan (for $25). Not bad at all.

(photo from wikipedia)

Location: South Street at Fulton Street

Grand Central Terminal

Filipinos, have you ever been inside Makati’s Peninsula? The lobby of that hotel looks a lot like Grand Central’s main concourse, minus the clock. Grand Central is a railroad terminal that has the greatest number of railway platforms, but if you travel by subway you’ll also be stopping by here very often. More than just being a world-famous train station, it is also one heck of a glorious building, and you don’t even need to be a trained architect to see that (try looking at the ceiling too for added sense of awe). If you’re a history buff, you can go to its museum and see how many times it’s been rebuilt. In and out, it looks great.

And how could I forget the dining concourse? There are plenty of tasty foods you can eat there, and, with a few exceptions (like the Oyster Bar) they’re priced relatively low for NYC’s standards.  This is quite easily one of my favorite places in Manhattan. It’s a great tourist spot without being a touristy nightmare; it’s beautiful; its foods taste great; and it’s the base if you’re planning to travel interstate, or just go to a more remote part of New York State.

Location:  89 E. 42nd Street at Park Avenue

Greenwich, SoHo and TriBeCa

These three get lumped together mainly because I can’t be bothered to write writeup for each individually, and because they’re similar anyway. Greenwich is a residential area for the moderately affluent; in the earlier days it’s the heart of the beatnik hipsters, but then Greenwich gentrified, so they moved to SoHo, to TriBeCa, and then finally to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Greenwich Village is the quietest area of the three, and you can see that the residents here spend lavishly in decorating their homes. It’s also home to many high class restaurants, bars, jazz clubs, gay communities, and Off-Broadway theaters (Off-Broadway are plays or musical for a place with smaller seating capacity).

SoHo (South of Houston Street) is known for its many art galleries but has also become a shopping destination for the young. Because it is home to trendy fashion outlets, it can be very crowded on weekends. To the south of SoHo is TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street) where it is quieter and where trendy restaurants can be found. There’s also a film festival here called the TriBeCa film festival.

Next: shopping destinations