Solo Travels: New York City
February 2024
After dreaming of being a New Yorker for most of my life, I finally spent a full week in NYC. This trip felt more like a prospective moving visit than a solo travel trip, but I’ll follow the format here to keep up on these posts.
Activities
Harbor Lights Cruise - Circle Line Cruises
Time to budget: 3 hours (2 hour cruise + boarding)
Ticket: $40-$50, depending on day
Brief review: This was the most touristy thing I did in NYC. The tour guide did talk quite a bit, so if you’re wanting a cruise to talk to the people you’re with, this might not be quite what you’re looking for — but as a solo traveler, I enjoyed hearing the tour guide’s insights into the city. I believe he said he’d lived in NYC for about 40 years, so he had a lot to share. It was quite cold, to be expected, but the views were best from the outside decks, so dress warm in the winter. The cruise goes from Pier 83 around Manhattan past the Williamsburg Bridge and then loops back around by the Statue of Liberty. I love being out on the water, so despite my frozen toes, I enjoyed this!
MoMA
Time to budget: 3 hours + *
Ticket: $28 online
*I spent most of my Saturday at MoMA (mostly because it was snowing), and they have extended hours on Saturdays — however, I think you could get through most of the artwork in 3-4 hours if you’re moving a bit quicker.
Brief review: For a modern art museum, there are many well-known, more traditional pieces, including Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Chopped Hair, and Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. There are a couple other Van Gogh pieces there as well. Another series that stood out to me was Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, which took up multiple walls. [I’ll probably write more about all of my favorite art I’ve seen this year to not leave as many out of these posts.] A jazz trio played in the evening, which was included with admission (you can see when these events are on their website — I didn’t know in advance). The Creativity Lab also had activities set up by the Lower Eastside Girls Club about dreaming of an ecologically just world, with books and prompts to draw about, which I loved.
The Met
Time to budget: day + *
Ticket: $30
*The Met is truly huge - I planned to be there for about 4 hours, and I didn’t even walk into every gallery they have in the amount of time I was there. If I was visiting for a day again, I’d try to have a better plan going in. You could probably spend weeks going through this museum.
Brief review: There are quite a few Van Gogh pieces at the Met, more than any other museum I’ve visited yet, so I enjoyed that. The building itself is a work of art, and holds such an incredible mix of art. It was pretty busy, as I went on President’s Day and apparently many people have that day off. I felt a bit more like I ran through this museum than really soaked up much of the artwork, but there is a lot of variety in what you could see here.
Transit Museum, Brooklyn
Time to budget: 1-2 hours
Ticket: $10
Brief review: This museum isn’t super big, and it’s probably sort of niche, but it’s right up my alley. Public transit is a big part of my interest in living in NYC, so learning about the history and seeing the subway cars throughout the years was so cool to me.
Queens Museum
Time to budget: 1 hour
Ticket: $8
Brief review: The Panorama of the City of New York is here and it is neat - it’s a model of the entire city. The museum is also located where the World’s Fair was, so there’s some information about that! The artwork was pretty niche, but seems to rotate frequently. It was a relatively small museum to go though, and a bit of a trek if you’re not in Queens.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts
Time to budget: 1 hour
Ticket: free, walk-ins welcome
Brief review: This museum is quite small — only two galleries were open — but the art featured was by artists that all seemed to have ties to the area, which I really loved.
hannah traore gallery
Time to budget: up to 1 hour
Brief review: Chella Man’s It Doesn’t Have to Make Sense show was here! Chella is one of my favorite artists and I’m so glad I got to see this show, which is on through March 30, 2024.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Time to budget: up to 1 hour
Brief review: Part of the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center in Harlem currently has an exhibition about Langston Hughes and a gallery of artwork done by their Junior Scholars Program.
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Time to budget: depends
Brief review: I ended up going to the Rose Main Reading Room and getting swept up in a book, so I didn’t see everything I could’ve while I was here. This is a gorgeous library. Note that it is no longer open on Sundays (because Mayor Eric Adams is defunding libraries but just released a NYPD dance team, so you know… the priorities are going well). Tourists can visit the library in NYC, and this is a great place to visit to sit and relax for free!
Stavros Nichos Foundation Library
Time to budget: depends
Brief review: Another public library building, across the street from the Schwarzman building, this building also has a rooftop terrace with free access to the views. It was closed due to snow when I visited, but the view out of the window was still nice.
Chelsea Market
Time to budget: depends
Brief review: I mostly just visited to eat a meal, but someone could probably spend quite a while here going through the shops. I did also look for the lights, as I’d seen them in a book or something in probably elementary school — this was maybe the biggest “letdown” of my trip, as they’re just string lights wrapped around a couple of archways, not quite what I’d worked up in my head since I was quite young — but the market is still worth a visit!
Canal Street Market
Time to budget: depends
Brief review: Again, you could probably spend longer here, but I just dropped in for a meal. The food here was a bit more expensive than my other meals, but it was delicious.
Coney Island
Time to budget: depends
Brief review: Most of the Coney Island chaos is closed for the season, but I visited mostly to walk along the beach and see the ocean - which was pretty peaceful as it was pretty empty for NYC. (I’m not sure anyone would call Coney Island peaceful in the summer from what I’ve seen, though.)
Staten Island Ferry
Time to budget: 1-2 hours for round-trip
The Staten Island Ferry is free and a nice way to step into the 5th borough and see the Statue of Liberty for free, if you’re interested in that. Or for me, another opportunity to be out on the water. I road the ferry to Staten Island, got off and immediately re-boarded the ferry back (which I’m not sure would always possible during busier times), so I didn’t spend much time at all on Staten Island, but I did at least stop in all five boroughs on my trip!
Parks
Time to budget: depends
I visited Central Park, Prospect Part, Bryant Park, Washington Square Park, Madison Square Park, Marsha P. Johnson State Park, Little Island, and I believe a few others. Many of these I spent less time at that I planned to, as it ended up being colder than was forecasted when I packed, but there are definitely pockets of nature if you look for them in New York. Bryant Park’s Winter Village was still open, so it was neat to have a taste of a NYC Christmas in February.
Walking & Sightseeing
I also did my own little walking tours to see sights in Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Bushwick, Williamsburg, DUMBO, Harlem, and others — I’ll probably share my full itinerary or map of my walking routes at some point for these stops as well.
Broadway
Without the Broadway tickets, my NYC trip was actually cheaper on average per day than my trips to Los Angeles and Chicago — but I kind of let the theatre kid in me pop out this week, and I spent more than I’d usually spend for tickets.
Merrily We Roll Along
Ticket: $39 lottery available
Leads: Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsay Mendez
With: Krystal Joy Brown and Reg Rogers
Closes: July 7
The show is 40-some years old, but in case you never had a Sondheim phase: it starts in the 1970s and goes back incrementally in time to follow the journey of three friends. Also, the director, Maria Friedman, apparently knew Sondheim. They did record and release a New Broadway Cast Recording of this show, so you can listen to the songs from anywhere! I loved this show so much I saw it twice - what can I say… it’s a hit (iykyk). Last October, I was watching press clips for this show, and I feel so lucky to have seen it.
Sweeney Todd
Ticket: Rush tickets available
Leads: Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster
With: Joe Locke
Closes: May 5
Again, another 40-some-year-old show, but for those without a Sondheim phase: this show follows Sweeney Todd, who is seeking to balance out the injustices that have happened to him via murder. It’s more operatic and choreographed than Merrily. I wasn’t sure how dark they’d take it, and while it certainly has darker moments, this was more of a light-hearted take. This current cast didn’t record the new recording, so I hope they release some recording of this cast. (You can definitely find some clips online.) I tried to see this a second time but didn’t get the rush tickets, but I’m honestly tempted to try to get back to NYC for a weekend of Broadway to see this show again before it closes.
Back to the Future
Ticket: more reasonably priced; another cast will also be touring soon with a stop in Lincoln in October
Leads: Casey Likes and Roger Bart
With: a larger, talented ensemble
Closes: just extended through Dec. 1 on Broadway!
I can’t compare this adaptation to the movie because I’ve not seen it before (what a surprise, I know) - but it did live up to what I knew of the storyline, from John Mulaney’s standup special. The tech in this show felt like the future of theatre. (I knew about this show through Tik Tok theatre kid JJ Niemann, but he actually had that night off.) This show also has the Original Broadway Cast Recording you could listen to!
16-year-old Hannah would be so impressed that I met Daniel Radcliffe, saw Jonathan Groff and Sutton Foster, and got my Playbill signed by Aaron Tveit. (26-year-old me is regretting leaving theatre behind.)
Accommodation
HI Hostel
Location: for the price, 104th & Amsterdam on the upper west side of Manhattan was pretty good. There were subway stations about a block and four blocks away — Broadway was about 20 minutes away on the 1, Lower Manhattan was about 40 minutes away, usually on the same line but sometimes with a transfer. While it was a bit further to Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, it was still pretty easy to navigate from the hostel’s location.
Compared to the HI Hostels in Chicago and LA, this one was not quite as good.
Part of this was me — I approached this trip more as a prospective local than tourist, so a hostel didn’t quite fit that mindset. I stayed longer too. I also had a top bunk in a room that was consistently full, unlike the other trips where I had a bottom bunk and not-full rooms. We also didn’t have an en-suite bathroom, but I don’t think I’d have shared that with 8 people anyhow.
Part of this was one roommate: she shook our bunk bed from the bottom bunk one night because somebody else was snoring, which I can’t say I’ve had happen before. Note: if you’re staying in a hostel, just bring earplugs/headphones/both.
However, this hostel just wasn’t at the same level as their other hostels. Our room was cranking out AC almost every night I was there. The comedy show was quite bad - quite bad. I don’t believe they had breakfast, or if they did I couldn’t find it. And maybe the biggest things was that there were far fewer places to just sit and relax — which if you’re walking around Manhattan with people on top of you all day and have to climb up to your bed, having a place to sit would be nice. (The LA & Chicago hostels had plenty of seating areas and places to relax outside of your room.)
At the end of the day, I viewed it as a place to shower and to sleep at night, and it worked for that — but I actually looked forward to leaving the hostel, which I can’t say I’ve really felt before. I guess it did help me actually board my flight home, so that served some purpose. (I did meet one nice roommate though!)
Transportation
MTA
NYC’s public transit is definitely the best of the trips I’ve taken so far - I think it is the best in the US, from what I’ve looked into.
I’m not sure why anyone would drive in NYC, unless you’re a celebrity or cannot take the stairs. (More cars enter Manhattan than there are parking spaces each day, for one thing.)
I’m not usually for celebrity exceptionalism, but the Sweeney Todd stage door was quite a lot, and I think if I was Joe Locke I’d also basically run to my car for a driver to speed me away.
And while “there are 150 accessible stations,” that just means there is an elevator — it may or may not work and it may be at the other end of the platform. They do seem to be working on accessibility, but there’s a ways to go for sure. (I’m going to start doing the stair machine at the gym.)
However, I love the subway. Especially with a phone, it’s pretty easy to navigate - but on the routes I started taking regularly, I started to not even need my phone. OMNY also means as long as you use the same payment method, you don’t pay over a certain amount each week - basically, unlimited rides for $34 every 7 days, starting whenever you first tap to pay (which is higher than LA’s weekly fare cap, but MTA does connect the city more efficiently than LA’s public transit).
It snowed while I was there, but I realized that didn’t bother me as much since I didn’t have to go shovel my car out or scrape my windows to then feel like I was risking my life on the street. So that’s a plus.
I know there are lots of stories about the subway not being safe, and there are certainly wrong-place, wrong-time instances, but I didn’t feel unsafe on the subway once. Yes, weird things happen, people will ask you for money, others will bust out into strange performances and then be upset nobody paid them, and some places will smell quite bad. Headphones and a mask help, but I didn’t feel unsafe.
I took the subway and a few buses (as well as the Staten Island Ferry, see above for more about that), and I didn’t even check Uber or taxi prices. Typically the drive time on the maps weren’t much faster than the Subway, either - with the exception of further routes out in Brooklyn or Queens.
Food
Some of my friends who’ve moved to NYC call it a sliding scale, and I found this really to be true. You could be in food heaven in NYC, with the famous chefs and restaurants, but that is out of my price range.
I didn’t really try to get groceries this trip - I wanted to see as much of New York as possible and didn’t plan to cook in the hostel - but most of my meals were under $10, and actually many were under $5. I ate a lot of pizza and bagels, so not the healthiest - but I started to find markets with produce cheaper than I’ve found in Nebraska lately, so I think if I’d move to NYC, it’s be possible to find more affordable options (that aren’t just the $3 deal for 2 pizza slices and a can of pop in Times Square — which was nice to offset the cost of my Broadway tickets a bit).
I spent about as much as I usually spend at a grocery store for a week of food, so that’s pretty good for being in such an expensive place! I planned ahead to find cheaper options, and that really paid off here — because the more expensive places are quite expensive in NYC.
I also want to shout out Schmackary’s, which is a cookie place owned by someone who moved from Nebraska!
New York
I’m sure I’ll share more about NYC soon. I’d love to find a way to spend more time there or even move there, so I’m hoping to be back soon, one way or another.
I don’t have another solo trip planned yet, as I’m pretty obviously trying to figure out my next steps in life and if I should move — but my family is traveling to Ireland in June!
Solo Travels is one of multiple series on the from Hannah Michelle Bussa Substack. As Hannah begins to embark on more solo travel journeys, she will share about her trips for those who may be interested in traveling more.
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