Visiting The Big Apple

You would think that since I've lived on the East Coast my whole life, and since I've been to New England and Canada several times, that I would have been to New York City at least once, but no. Now that I have time and some money, I'd like to go, but I'm completely overwhelmed on where to stay, what to visit, how to get around, etc. Searching around on the internet hasn't really helped, so I'm hoping to get some input from folks who live around the city, or have at least been there before.

I live close to Baltimore, about 5 hours south. I'm fine with interstate/freeway driving, even heavy traffic, but I don't want to drive into the city. Is it feasible to stay in, say, New Jersey, and take some kind of rail in? The NJ transit page has rail maps, but it doesn't seem like the stations are conveniently placed anywhere near hotels, and they don't have much parking. My other option would be to take Amtrak from Baltimore into the city, but that would end up costing me a lot more, both in hotel and train tickets.

How's the subway system? It's massive, yes, but it's not as bad as its reputation (crime, smell, etc), is it? What areas of NYC should I completely avoid? If I'm only in NYC for a few days, what things should I absolutely see (I don't care about Broadway, but I would like to visit Nintendo World, and any other cheesy shopping areas (like the mall in downtown Philadelphia))?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Again, I don't know NJ that well, but East Rutherford seems like there's a lot of hotels/restaurants around the stadium. Either that or somewhere in Newark. I'm a federal employee, so at many nice hotels I can stay at per diem, which in the Newark area is $124/night (compared to over $200 in Manhattan).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

What you need to do is give a list of what things you dig on trying while you're there, and people can point you in the right direction.

Unique (but affordable) dining would be great to find. I always love finding new places to eat when I travel. I hadn't thought about getting a seat at a late night taping; that would be cool except isn't there a several month waiting for those? I was planning on doing this sooner rather than later.

Mostly what I do when I visit a new city is check out all the shopping areas. That sounds weird from a straight guy, I know, and I'm not looking for the latest fashions or anything, I just dig finding new stores (video games especially) or getting lost in an enormous mall. Not cookie-cutter suburban malls, but malls that are maybe old and off the beaten path, or malls in the middle of the city that have cool architecture. It's hard to describe, and makes me sound a bit one dimensional, I suppose Something like a flea market/open air market would be awesome as well. But of course, that's not what NYC is all about.

By and large, I'd like to visit the touristy things, like the Empire State Building, Times Square, Macy's, Ground Zero, etc. Things that if you only go to New York once, you can say you've seen them.

I don't care about theater at all, nor am I big on nightlife in general. That's why I'm perfectly content to stay outside the city, and come home at night to a nice quiet hotel room.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Learning about the PATH is very helpful, since I hadn't heard of that before, and it looks very cheap. The problem is there are so few stations. After further research, I've found a nice Residence Inn in West Orange that is 4 miles from the South Orange station, or 8 miles from the Harrison station on PATH, both off of I-280. There's also another Residence Inn around the parking lot of the Jersey Gardens, but from the map it doesn't look like it would be easy to get to a rail station from there.

Chaotic, are you sure you have the name of the Elizabeth Square mall right? I've tried googling it every which way and only turn up a mall in New Zealand.

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That link is awesome, Chaotic, thanks!

Soluzar, I was planning to go to J&R, as I've heard mention of them before in relation to games. Provided I can get the time off, I plan to go March 5-8, so I won't be there on a Sunday to check out the open air market. Since this is my first time, I'll probably just stick to Manhattan, though it sounds like there might be some cool districts in Queens as well.

I was speaking idiomatically.