The last 3 days of our New York leg saw us utilizing our 3-day New York pass. For this section of my travels, I'll be blogging it in a slightly different way. Instead of the usual day-to-day journalling, I'll split this 3 hectic days into 2 portions - one for the tourist attractions that we managed to squeeze in (Tourist Edition) and the other for the foodie spots (Foodie Edition).
Before I get started with the lowdown on the sites that we visited, I'll give a brief description of how the New York Pass works (and thus explaining the mad rush). The New York City Pass (not to be mixed up with similar sounding passes like City Pass) gives you access to more than 70 sites, including the Empire State Building & The Statue of Liberty Cruise, and comes with their very own guide book (thus I suggest getting the book early).
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| Your pass and guidebook |
The pass is activated on the
first day you use it and
has to be used consecutively. Furthermore, it
does not work on a 24-hours basis and end on the midnight of your final day (so do not activate it in the night). Some of the site passes give you access to the
fast pass and some doesn't, so check it out in the guidebook or on their website before heading down. In addition to the passes, you can top up $45 for their hop-on bus services. I recommend that you skip this as a 7-day unlimited transport pass for $29 is better as it covers more grounds and is available for longer hours.
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| The New York MetroCard |
Here are the different prices for the NY pass:
1 Day Adult Pass - $80
2 Day Adult Pass - $130
3 Day Adult Pass - $140.25 (Discounted) $165 (Original)
7 Day Adult Pass - $178.50 (Discounted) $210 (Original)
Some information that might be useful:
1) You can either order online and ship (postage applies) or collect it in person at various locations including one in Time Square (Planet Hollywood).
2) An average attraction will set you back from $13 - $25 (excluding fast pass). So plan your day(s) properly to make sure that you fully utilize your pass.
Personally, I am not 100% sure as to whether this is the BEST deal in town. However, after doing some calculations and comparison, we concluded that we easily saved at least $50 by getting the pass at the cost of rushing around the sites. So my advice: If you want to take your time, you might want to consider another pass. If you don't mind the rush, this pass is for you.
To our first stop: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Read on for the MET, Natural History Museum and many other sites
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The choice of our first location is a no-brainer. Any visitors to the Big Apple HAS to visit this world-renowned museum, even if they are not a fan of art. Besides being one the iconic symbols of New York, this museum isn't too "heavy" on its exhibits, making it enjoyable even for a quick walkthrough.
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| Entrance to the Met |
The exhibits are nicely spaced out in a spacious environment and the layout is simple and easy to understand. The museum itself is sorted out by time periods, beginning with Roman era but follows no chronological order. Overall, with ease of navigation and the spacious feel, the museum itself is pretty enjoyable for different level of art enthusiast, which explains its popularity worldwide.
Here are some of the usual exhibits you'll find:
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| Perseus and Medusa |
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| Medieval hall |
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| Arms and armor |
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| Egyptian exhibtion |
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| Renaissance art |
Some of the more interesting ones include:
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| Asmat Bis Poles |
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| Optical illusion by Salvador Dali |
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| The Priestess Tagerem in the special exhibit of the Temple of Dendur |
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| The famous View of Toledo by El Greco |
Overall, we spend a total of 2 - 3 hours in the museum which wasn't enough to cover everything but enough for the highlights. This is one museum that I'll want to come back for.
Time recommended: 1/2 day - 3/4 dayRatings: Must-go
Website: http://www.metmuseum.org/
The American Museum of Natural History
Popular amongst families and schools, the American Museum of Natural History is also one of the largest museum in the world. Taking a walk down this museum brought me back to my childhood days of collecting Dinosaurs magazine and being fascinated over these extinct creatures. Obviously, this museum offers more than just Dinosaurs, with partially every type of animals being littered around its halls including mammals, insect and marine life.
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| Front of the Natural History Museum |
Besides its exhibits, most people remember the museum for something else - its pop culture representation. The two most famous (which I can recall immediately) ones is in
Friends (where Ross works) and in
Night at the Museum. So besides looking for animals, I tried to find familiar scenes out of these shows.
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| Robin Wi...oh i mean Theodore Roosevelt |
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| Two Dinosaur welcomes you |
The museum layout is pretty much straightforward - all the way up to the Dinosaurs and you progress downwards to different classes of animals. Within the floors itself, it can get a little confusing, especially when the lift doesn't take you to the start, with no clear indications at all. So basically, we actually starting at the 2nd last section of the exhibit (the sequence is chronological).
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| Rexy from the Fossil Hall |
The exhibits themselves were pretty exciting and the descriptive boards were very informative. It was a fun experience for me going through all the fossils and diorama, and relearning all the information written all over. My only complain (if I were to nitpick) was that despite the size of the museum, the place seemed very jammed up and there wasn't much space to move around (there wasn't much of a crowd when I got there).
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| Mammal Halls |
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| Milstein Hall of Marine Life |
Overall, this museum did excite me for awhile at the Dinosaur part, it went downhill. Mostly its because many of the exhibits were off limits to us as our pass only got us the basic tickets. So we couldn't get in to the Rose Center and Planetarium or any of the special exhibits. On top of that, many of the the permanent exhibits were closed early (we reached in the afternoon), either for the function later in evening (as you can see from the Hall of Marine Life photos) or for general maintenance. Considering I have gone to the London and DC counterpart, I wouldn't rate this museum very highly.
Time recommended: 3/4 day
Ratings: Nice place, Good-to-go
Website: www.amnh.org
NBC Studio Tours
Last place of the day - The Rockafella Center, home to the famous NBC studios. We headed (more like rushed there) to get tickets to our scheduled Studio Tour timing. It was a little confusing to get to the NBC store (considering we came from the subway) but we still made it in time. A little tip: It is easier to navigate to the NBC store (where we get the tickets and start the tour) from the streets.
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| NBC Studios |
I won't reveal much regarding the tour (it'll be more exciting if I don't spoil any of their surprises) except that it gets you to the Saturday Night Live studios - pretty exciting stuff for any SNL fans. The tour was really an interesting experience, though it was a little bit too short. The guides were quite energetic and the information was very relatable. I highly recommend taking this tour for anyone (and definitely for SNL fans). I would also recommend watching at least one episode of SNL before going for the tour.
Time recommended: 2 hour (1 hour tour)
Ratings: Must-go
Website: http://www.nbcstudiotour.com/
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| All ready with our NBC passes! |
Top of the Rock
Last agenda of the day. Nothing much to talk about, besides the obvious fact that Top of the Rock is literally Top of the ROCKafella center. From here, you get the fabulous view of the city line of New York City and heading there at night just adds an extra gloss to the already-lovely experience.
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| The iconic Top of the Rock photograph |
Before heading out to the observation deck, you'll get to read some of the Rock's history. It's definitely not very exciting stuff but it makes a good read if you have the time. The observation deck itself is made up of two levels - the first deck is bigger but has a glass panel all around it while the second deck is totally open but leaves you exposed to the elements of nature. Obviously, the photos taken from the second deck was so much nicer but the strong and cold wind made it unbearable for anyone without proper clothing.
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| First Observation Deck |
People always ask me which view is better - TOTR or Empire State Building. I can't give a definite answer but I can list down one advantage of each. Empire State Building is obviously taller and has unrestricted view. For the TOTR, you can have an unrestricted view of the Empire State Building from up here (though the Chrysler Building is blocked). My suggestion - Go to TOTR at night for the city lights and Empire State Building in the day for the unrestricted aerial view (provided you get the pass too).
Time recommended: 1-2 hours (including queue)
Ratings: Good place, go if you have the time
Website: http://www.topoftherocknyc.com/
Here are some of the selected shots. Enjoy.
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| New York city lights |
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| The Empire State Building |
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| The Chrysler Building (hidden) |
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| Another side of New York |
Well, thats 4 sites within a day. It was a really tiring day for all of us, but nonetheless a very satisfying one. The attractions today were very appealing in their very own ways and I was glad I went through them all. Personally, I would definitely want to go back to the MET.
The next two days wasn't as packed with attractions but it was still an enthralling experience for us. I'll leave the rest of the reviews to my next entry: Rush Hour (Tourist Edition) Part II.
Check out my Facebook page for more pictures on the sites that my group visited today:
Click here
Overall, it was a hit-and-miss breakfast for us. The Crab Cakes and bacon were pretty awesome but the grits and eggs didn't really match up to our expectations. I'll still recommend a visit to this bistro though as I'm pretty sure this bistro has more than just grits and eggs. 
