New York

I've spent many, many exhausting hours poring over information about NYC...air travel, hotels, land transportation, etc, etc, etc.  There are just too many options.  I don't want a bunch of options. I just want about 5 to choose from then I can make up my mind.  I guess that's why some people go through travel agencies but I don't want to pay more for my trip so tend to do my own planning. I typically use Google Earth to help with our travel plans because I can actually see where everything is in real life and even go to the street view to scroll around and see exactly what other businesses are in the same area.  I just get a little seasick using Google Earth because of all the movement on the screen.  I think I stood on the streets of New York about 10 times last night during my Google Earth travels.

I just cannot wait to get in the middle of all that is NYC.  I am pretty sure I have the airline narrowed down to one and 95% sure of the dates we will travel. The biggie is choosing a hotel.  And it's kind of funny how after I see that staying anywhere downtown (that is reputable) it's no big deal to think that we will pay about $300 a night, or more.  That's probably comparable to about $100 per night around here.  At first I was shocked but now I'm numb to it and if we're going to go there we want to be all up in the middle of everything so we don't want to stay on the outskirts of town.   It's the big city folks, nothings cheap!  So, for $350 you'd think we would be paying for something like the Ritz, right?  Nope, that's like a Hampton Inn a block off of Times Square.  The Ritz is more like $700 per night for a little ole rinky-dink room.

We still haven't decided on 4 or 5 nights but I think we are leaning more towards 4 nights and just taking a really early flight to get there and a later one to get back so we can soak up as much big city culture as we can.  Right now we're narrowing in on Hilton properties including the Waldorf as we can get a bargain there for $315 per night but it's a little more east than I want to be.  Robbie wants to stay somewhere where we can have a room up really high.  The Hilton New York is where one of my blogger friends has stayed a few times and really liked it.  We are eyeing that one too. 

Hopefully we'll have more concrete plans by Christmas!  I think by then I will have memorized the entire NYC subway system.