The Smiley Smile Message Board

I'm visiting New York City for the first time later this month. Since you're all a well traveled lot, do you have any advice or must-sees/dos/eats? I'll probably end up by myself during the daytime, so I figured I'd just walk around and explore. We're staying off of Madison Square Park.

Visit Manhattan.

Museum of Modern Art definitely.  Go to Times Square and see a Broadway show or two, there are some good shows opening soon.  Take a leisurely walk in Central Park on a nice day.  Go to Chelsea, they have so many galleries out there that you can just walk in and check out.

I have a rule that when I'm in NYC, I eat nothing but pizza.  Just saying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaKuT3dIwfc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaKuT3dIwfc)

Thanks guys, these were along the lines of what I was thinking. I probably won't be taking in any Broadway shows, because I'll be at improv shows probably every night. We're going because my husband's team is opening the NYC Improv Festival (Wednesday, March 19 at 7:30 if anyone's local).

We probably won't be eating much pizza, one of the guys on the team is a native Chicagoan, and he has some weird inferiority complex about New York and especially about pizza. Anyway, during the daytimes the festival is hosting workshops and things for the performers, so that'll be my time to wonder around the parks and museums.

Ha, I knew this was coming.


My condolences.  :lol

Check out the High Line, the old rail line that has been turned into a park. Also, Chinatown is great for dim sum. I would go to some museums (the Frick is gorgeous), maybe Brooklyn flea if it's open for the season yet, and Chelsea Market is kind of fun if you like food.

Stay out of Times Square. It's tourist madness.

Go see The Cloisters!  Upper Manhattan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloisters

Pay homage to the Old Man as little Billy Burroughs turns 100! Lots of fun nyc events downtown.

http://wsb100.org/

Sorry for the plug. It isn't often my eyeballs are underneath Steve Buscemi's head. Trying to get stuff ready for this is what's been curtailing my normal forum loitering!

I'm looking forward to heading back east bigtime, mainly because I haven't had a decent slice of pizza since moving to California.

Thanks again everyone, this is helpful! I definitely won't be heading to Times Square, that's just not my thing. One of the guys really wants to see the Empire State Building, and that's probably the only really touristy thing we'll do.

Ontor - if we were going to be there that week I totally would check out the celebration. Good luck!

Ride the staten island ferry -- it's free.  There are several top notch museums here, and always top notch musicians playing somewhere.  Chinatown is fun, but there are many ethnic enclaves with amazing eats scattered throughout the boroughs.  Brooklyn is big and worth investigating (particularly for pizza and bagels!), Queens too.

Times Square blows with bad breath.

South Bronx, make sure it's night time. Also make sure to take a few swims in the Hudson.

I'm back! Thanks to everyone for the pointers. Even though I basically did none of your suggestions, or anything that I really wanted to at all, I still had a pretty good time. We never left Manhattan and I never got the alone time I was expecting. So, I was at the mercy of being in a group of 5, who mostly wanted to do touristy stuff. So, no museums or anything really off the beaten path like I would have liked. I would have never done something like the Empire State Building on my own and it was neat to see the city like that, so my friends weren't a complete drag. In the evenings I was usually waist deep in improv - most of which was really good. The best part of NYC for me was Central Park and the worst part without a doubt was Times Square, but everyone except the two that wanted to go felt that way and was very vocal about it, so I felt vindicated.

I even got to sneak into a record store and made a pretty rare find during the 45 minute wait to eat at Momofuku. That was really good, so were all restaurants. My favorite was probably Carnegie Deli, although eating that much beef before we sat in on some read-throughs at NBC probably wasn't the best idea we ever had.

Hi all,

Some places to go to in NYC:

Central Park
The Empire State Buidling
The Metropolitian Meuseum of Art
MOMA
Sak's Fifth Avenue
Rockefeller Center (had a great outdoor restaurant in the summer)
Zabaar's
FYE
Broadway Show
TV and Radio Museum
United Nations
Statue of Liberty
Trump Tower
Dylan's Candy Shop
Jaque T
Meuseum Shop at Rockefeller Center


Places to eat:

MOMA Barroom
The outdoor resturant to Rockerfeller Center over the summer  (The beer and wine cost a lot)
Any of the resturants at Sak's Fifth Avenue
If anyone is looking for a place to have drinks during the summer the Met. Museum has a roof garden overlooking Centeral Park