New York Family Trip

The kids have been learning statue of liberty, constitution, liberty bell, civil war and etc. We thought if would be great if they can see the actual thing and the actual place of where it happened. Hopefully that would make them more interested and remember those historical events longer. Who doesn't love history ;)

We have been to La Guardia airport at New York for a 3/4 times now but first for the kids. We were glad the airport is recently renovated because it was very old and at times dirty and quite disorganized. There is still no subway directly to the airport (one of the biggest pain point in our view), but there are multiple buses between the airport and the subway station. There is a free shuttle bus from LGA and Jackson Heights Station, the number Q70. We got our 7 day unlimited pass and hopped on the subway to Manhattan.

We stayed at Hyatt Place New York. We purposely reserved our hotel very close to a subway station so it would convenience and easy on us especially when we have luggages. The hotel location is great and we have a nice room with a great view to empire state building.

After having our breakfast complimentary at the hotel, we headed to the rock. We happened to see an Amazon Go store and decided to give it a try. We have four heads and taking stuff and putting it back. At the end, mommy took a small tit tat ;) and we walked right out. A few hours later, we received a bill from Amazon charging just that. Amazing.

We remembered the Rockefellers center was much more grand with that big Christmas tree during the holiday season. At the time of our visit, it felt not as grand.

We continued to the central park. Central park is huge. There were some bike rental and I think it would be a good idea to bike to see more of the park. However, due to our schedule crunch, we decided to just have a good stroll. There are many places for resting and just slow down in this hustle and bustle city.

We found a playground for the kids. It is still their favorite thing to do.

After some times, we went to the American Natural History Museum nearby.

We made the reservation previously through Viator with some discount code. This place is gigantic with ton of things to see. It has multiple floors and variety themes. It could be easily half day visit. This place is great for kids as we also saw some school tours.

After our lunch at the museum, we headed to 911 memorial museum. We reserved our ticket earlier via Chase Travel portal which also include skip the line. We reserved from Chase Travel portal since we could redeemed our Chase reward points at 1.25 redemption value. However please check with their official website for special rate (colelge student, kids under 7, family pass, nypd/papd/fdny and etc. We are glad we did that cause the regular line is super long. As a matter of fact, we always try to reserve any ticket earlier whenever possible.

A note, there is the 911 outdoor memorial which is free. The 911 museum needs an admission ticket. And also, the the one world trade center is a separate ticket if you plan to go up to its observatory.

Touring the museum reminded us the day of the event. We were still in the college and can still resonate the day full of news of craziness and panics.

After the touring 911 memorial museum, we took a subway train to station 50st and had our dinner at pure thai cockhouse. The food was pretty good. The reason we ate at this area because we wanted to watch a show at New World Stages, one of the Off Broadway Alliance where they have several Off-Broadway shows in New York City. New york is popular for broadway show shows like The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, The Lion King, and etc. But those shows are expensive costing hundreds per person. Off broadway shows (smaller theatre size) are slightly cheaper but still quite expensive for a family of four. We were lucky to discover that at the time of our New York visit, there is a promotion by 20at20 for off broadway show discounts. The way it works is the ticket costs $20 before 20 minutes of the show. It is like a last minutes tickets sales while the supplies last. We were lucky to snap 4 tickets for the Gazillion Bubble Show! It was our first off broadway show and we all loved it!

Kids dream come true!

Have you seen anyone would actually wear a raincoat watching bubble show to not get wet :)

After the show, we stopped by at the times square. This is the popular place for people to gather around during new year eve celebration to see the famous ball drop. We had heard how amazing the sentiment is during that celebration, and also how insanely crowded the place could become.

The kids won't miss the M&M store nearby..

The next day, we changed our hotel to Hyatt Grand Central in the early morning, and took the subway to The Battery station. Yes, we are going to see the Statue of Liberty! We have previously reserved our ticket at Statue City Cruises. Note that there are many ferry vendor selling cruises or tours, but Status City Cruises is the only vendor authorized to access the islands, monuments and musuems. More information here. At the time of our visit, the Crown was under renovation and wasn't available for visit. We bought the Pedestal reserve ticket which includes round trip ferry service, Statue of Liberty Museum and Grounds, Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration as well as the Statue of Liberty Pedestal. A few words of advice. Try to go early as possible to avoid large crowd. Beware of the ferry (and pedestal/crown if you have that) hours. Arrive 30 minutes earlier of your checked in time as you will be going through airport-style security before boarding the ferry and that could be a long line.

One tip when boarding the ferry. Stay on the right side of the ferry to get a better view of the Statue of Liberty. Most people takes the left side seats as it is facing the direction of the statue when parking, but the ferry would be first making an U-turn when heading to it :)

After the visit, we went to eat at a Malaysian restaurant, Kopitiam at Chinatown. The food are delicious. We definitely have ordered way too much :)

While we were walking back to station, we stopped and watched some street performance. it is like Harlem Globetrotters putting some basketball shows. It was entertaining.

We got a picture with the stars!

Daddy wanted to visit the iconic Brooklyn bridge. We didn't do enough homework of this and ended up spending lot of times and going to different wrong places. Everyone were tired and lost interest by the time we reached there. To save you the time, just search Brooklyn Bridge View. The easiest way is to go to Brooklyn Bridge - City Hall station and walk towards the pedestrian entrance of the bridge.

We then headed to the lower Manhattan to take a brief stroll around the New York Stock Exchange. Yes, more bull please.

We were too late for another off broadway show so we headed back to our hotel for our next day trip to Philadephia. We decided to spend a couple of days at Philadelphia since it is just about 2 hours from NYC. See our adventure here!

After the knowledge-filled Philly trip, we took the Amtrack back to NYC. Went to Bryant Park to visit the New York Public Library. It appears that the public library is now only for research purpose. All the books and activities have been moved to Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library across the 5th Avenue.

After the kids read some books and took some rest, we went to Cafe Habana to eat the popular grilled corn covered with mayonnaise, cheese with chili powder and lime. We went to this place 10+ years ago and thought it was pretty unique and want the kids to try it too. The place was hot and a little cramped. The food was good but not as spectacular as we thought it would be. Perhaps we set our expectation too high?

Mommy also had her Lady M cake. We had heard people raved about it before and very expensive. After trying it, we thought it is ok but way overpriced.

Went to Wah Fung Fast food to get some bbq pork rice. It appears that many people come to this place for delicious and cheap food. For $5, there was plenty of food and actually pretty delicious.

We took the subway to Jackson Hts - Roosevelt Av metro station and take the free LaGuardia link bus to the airport. There were multiple waiting areas. Look out for this one.