Cheaper ways to see N.Y. with kids

By Liz Pulliam Weston

Our daughter first visited New York City when she was 5 months old. Since then, we've taken her at least once a year, and her enthusiasm for the place has only grown.

It's an enchanted city when you're a kid. There are rocks to climb in Central Park, elaborate department-store windows at Christmas and horse-drawn carriages in Central Park (pretty touristy, I know, but when you're a little girl you feel like a princess). There are ferries to ride, castles to visit and street musicians everywhere you turn.

But New York can be hard on parents' pocketbooks -- perhaps never more so than this year, as a recovered travel industry has sent hotel prices soaring. At one point in spring, the Embassy Suites in Lower Manhattan was quoting a room rate of more than $450. Prices have settled down a bit since then, but a night in a business hotel can still set you back more than $300, and even the "budget" options, such as the Comfort Inn in Times Square, are pushing the $200-a-night mark.

Some of the best-known ways to economize -- staying in hostels and standing in line for hours at the TKTS booth for discounted Broadway tickets -- are tough for families to pull off.

Still, more than 37 million of us are expected to visit this year, and many will have kids in tow. Here are my best suggestions, based on our experiences, of how to keep down costs and still have fun:

Consider an apartment. Having a kitchen can save you a small fortune in food costs, and you'll feel more like a New Yorker tucked into an apartment building in a leafy neighborhood than you will in some high-rise hotel. You can find short-term rentals on Craigslist or through agencies such as New York Habitat. Just make sure to do plenty of research about the neighborhoods; some can go from great to sketchy in a block.

Get a one-week MetroCard. Taxi fares add up, so grab a subway map and buy the seven-day unlimited-ride MetroCard. The $24-per-person pass will pay for itself after 12 rides. (If you'll be in the city only a day, opt for the one-day Fun Pass.) If you've never ridden a subway before, you may need to spend a little time studying the map or be willing to ask for help. Contrary to popular conception, I've found most city residents to be enormously helpful to lost tourists.

Go the park-and-picnic route

Plan to picnic. If the weather's good, you can picnic in a park; if it's not, picnic in your room. If you don't have access to a kitchen, get a foam cooler at the nearest Duane Reade pharmacy (there's seemingly one every other block in Manhattan) and fill it with fruit, cheese, bread and other goodies from one of the ubiquitous little groceries. You have plenty of more-gourmet choices, too, such as Dean & DeLuca, Zabar's on the Upper West Side or the Whole Foods Market in the basement of the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle. There's also a farmers market on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at Union Square Park that's worth a visit; you can get schedules for this and other so-called Greenmarkets at the Council on the Environment of NYC.

• Video: Rachael Ray explores New York food

Choose the Staten Island Ferry. The boat leaves from the southern tip of Manhattan and gives you a free ride past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, plus spectacular water views of the city. And did I mention it's free? Once you're there, you can take the S40 bus to the Staten Island Children's Museum (it's at the Snug Harbor Road stop); admission is $5. Or take the S74 bus to Historic Richmond Town, a living-history village with museums and re-enactments of life in colonial times ($5 admission for adults, $3.50 for kids 5 to 17, free for kids 4 and under). Or just return to the ferry and cruise back.

Play in Battery Park. For years, there was only one park that mattered to us, and that was the one in the center of Manhattan. But next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal is another great if somewhat lesser-known park with playgrounds, bike paths and walkways that stretch around the west edge of the island. (The free National Museum of the American Indian is nearby as well.) As soon as she bounced into a playground there this spring, our preschooler was recruited into a game of freeze tag with a bunch of other kids who looked like a mini-United Nations (with our progeny representing Northern Europe). Later, she inserted herself into a game of catch with two elementary-school girls. Farther on, a swing band played near the North Cove Yacht Harbor; she danced with her daddy while I took pictures and tried to calculate how much a berth there might cost. A walk up the steps of the nearby World Financial Center gave us a sobering view, through enormous glass windows, of the Ground Zero site.

Continued: Sail through South Street Seaport

 1 | 2 | next >