New York City - Can't wait to go again

I almost didn’t go. Took a long time to be persuaded to go to the USA. When I was making plans for the trip, I allowed 3 days for New York. I thought it would be plenty and I wanted to see more of the rural area of the States. Also wanted to spend a lot of time in New England and enjoy the colors of Autumn.

I am so glad that I didn’t book hotels for the whole trip, as we had to stay in New York more than 3 days. It’s not enough. We ended up staying 7 nights. New York City just grows on you, with every day. So much history, so much culture, so many places I’ve seen on TV. I am going to live there for a month sometime soon. Enjoy all that New York has on offer and do it with no rush.

Booking a hotel in NYC can be a little bit tricky. I am not one to book things months ahead of time. I’m more like, hours… And yet again my theory that there will always be something worked, and worked very well for us. The prices of hotels right in the middle of the city were astronomical. $600 a night were common and I almost booked it when we were 3 days away from the departure. Luckily I didn’t.

I looked at the map and decided to widen the area of search. It would be wonderful to live right in the middle of Manhattan, but $600 a night is a lot of money to pay. I decided to look in for a place in a different town, and actually in a different State, but only 12 minutes bus ride from Manhattan. New Jersey.

I booked a room in a townhouse just across the river for $45 a night. 7 nights stay cost us half of what we’d have to pay for just one night in NYC. Bargain.

New York City panorama from New Jersey

And I know it was only 12 min bus ride because I clocked them. All we had to do was to walk about 100m from our quiet street to the main road and the buy would wait for us. Literally. We never once waited for a bus to NYC. The private buses, big vans, always stopped when they saw us walking towards the stop and we hopped in. I think the fare was 2$.