3 days in Manhattan

1. View from the Empire State Building after dark. Breathtaking (in good weather).
2. Grand Central Station. Probably my favourite building -- especially inside. Definitely grand.
3. Walking down Broadway from 32nd Street to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal - it might take a full 2 hours, but it's a good way to take in several contrasting neighbourhoods.
4. Staten Island Ferry - the best free ride in the city.

Quick Tips:

Your choice of hotel can make or break your trip and I'm told standards vary a lot. Check out the TripAdvisor and Travelocity websites for frank and honest guest reviews of hotel stays before you choose. Read the guest reviews of the Hotel Pennsylvania on Travelocity to see what I mean.

Best Way To Get Around:

We walked everywhere in Manhattan from Battery Park to Central Park. Weather, time and legs permitting this is a great way to see the different neighbourhoods and architecture that define Manhattan. We didn't walk far after dark but by day absolutely everywhere felt really safe.

This hotel was a bit of a find - we heard of it through the NYC Mini Rough Guide and checked it against a few others using travelocity, expedia and tripadvisor web sites, reading previous guest reviews, which were always positive.

It's in quite a good spot on 32nd street between 5th and Broadway, one block from The Empire State, Macys and Madison Square Gardens. It's on a street that seems mainly to be occupied by the Korean and Japanese community and this is reflected in the type of restaurants available outside the doors. The clientele of the Stanford also seem to be mainly Korean business types, but you get a few obvious tourists (like us).

The hotel itself is well presented, maintained, decorated and very clean. You can get a virtual tour of the rooms on the web site www.hotelstanford.citysearch.com. From our experience the depiction is accurate. We paid for a queen size room, but got an upgrade for the same price - we booked on-line through their web-site. Maybe you could negotiate a better deal, but we didn't try. You also get a continental breakfast thrown in. This consists of self-serve coffee/tea/juice, muffins, croissants, cereal, toast and bagels. Breakfast starts at 7.30am and is served in the bar on the 2nd floor. If the Hotel is busy that means standing in a queue, which builds up from 7.20am with late comers having nowhere to sit. I'd wait until 8.30am or so unless you need an early start, by which time things have calmed down.

The rooms and beds are very clean and the decor in a good state of renovation. The bath/shower had good water pressure and the temperature was easy to control. Every room has its own code operated strong box for your valuables - there are clear instructions on how to set your access code and operate it in the room. This facility is free.

The Rough Guide says the staff are friendly and efficient, and we can vouch for that. The hotel also has a restaurant - but we didn't try it. The bar was OK but generally quiet with limited choice and typically pricey for a hotel bar. And the ground floor coffee shop was a bit of a let down (unless you like paying $12 for a strawberry shake and a luke-warm, weak coffee).

Saying that, the coffee shop was the only disappointment and we'd stay there again without hesitation.

This is the place for an inexpensive bite on the run or a cheap and filling dinner, but not the place to go if you need to impress someone. At lunch time they serve huge, fresh slices of pizza over the counter for about $1.75, or you can eat in and get a generously topped 18 inch pizza that can feed four for about $17. Your plates will be paper or foil, and your cutlery will be plastic, but if you want to stretch your holiday budget a bit further, you can do a lot worse. The fast and friendly staff also do some very tasty baked pasta dishes for about $8 a plate.

Times Square by day is a safe and busy place. There are lots of opportunities to shop, with all the major chain stores represented, and also lots of novelty shops selling NYC T-shirts 5 for $10 and the like. Quality items no doubt. It’s pretty safe and although it would be an obvious place for beggars and con artists to congregate, these people are not prevalent at all. The NYPD clearly have a way of keeping it in check.

Walk north from 52nd Street and you encounter the relative tranquility of Central Park, walk east and you're heading towards well-worth-seeing sights like Grand Central Station and the Chrysler Building (all within 10 minutes of Times Square). For that reason it’s not surprising that there is a very high concentration of hotels in and around the square. For some reason, a man busks in his underpants on a traffic island most days. We saw him in September, though January would have been more interesting . . .

Although the neon shines 24 hours a day, you only get to fully appreciate it by night. This is also when the square gets busiest. It can be quite an ordeal just getting a bit of space to take a decent photo. After dark the streets are also swelled by theatregoers, with a variety of shows on offer from the wholesome to the not-so.

I suppose the way you feel about Times Square depends on whether you are a night person (in that case you'll love it and spend a lot of time there), or a day person (in that case you'll visit, but with so much more to see in Manhattan, it may not be the focal point of your trip). It is inconceivable, though, that your first trip to Manhattan would miss it.

We went to the top of the building at about 9pm on a clear late September night. This was not deliberately planned, but as it turned out, it would be difficult to imagine a set of conditions that would have been more ideal.

At the moment, it costs about $11 for an adult to ascend to the observation deck (your ears pop in the elevators). When we went, there was no queue or wait. Security is understandably airport-style, so be prepared to have your bags searched. You've also got to put up with the irritation of a souvenir photograph on the way up. You can decline to buy it on the way out if you want to, but you may have to be firm.

At the observation deck, there is a well-stocked souvenir shop, but I'm not sure the stuff there isn't available everywhere else. From there, you go out on to the observation deck which encircles the shop. The surrounding wall is reassuringly high (about 4 feet), and above that you've got strong mesh to prevent jumpers.

I've attached a photograph, but I can assure you my camera could not do justice to the spectacular panoramic views. You can look down on everything. The Chrysler Building is easy to pick out, and the Statue of Liberty, small as it is in relation to some other Manhattan sights, can also be picked out in the distance. The view really is as good as you would expect, provided you have the head for it. If you have a nervous disposition, I think I'd avoid gusty days.

Inside the building, there are some nice sights, particularly the coloured windows (see my other picture). Thoroughly recommended.

We stayed in the Hotel Stanford on 32nd Street and we prefer to walk. I checked the map and reckoned that it may be 4 or 5 miles to get to the Staten Island ferry terminal, but that was OK for us. I know this might not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you have the legs there are things to see at very regular intervals.

One of the first things you come encounter is Madison Square. This is no Central Park, but it is a little green oasis where people stop to read/take their lunches/take a rest or feed the squirrels. It also has the quirky Flatiron Building at the southern tip, which will give you a nice photo opportunity.

Going past the Flatiron on Broadway leads you to Union Square. This is less of a tranquil park area than Madison Square, although it is free from traffic inside the square. Inside Union Square there is always something going on. We were there on a Wednesday and there was a fresh food market filling the square. Later on, it gets busy with younger people, students and skater types.

When you get to the intersection between Broadway and Waverley its worth taking a little detour if you have the time and heading west towards Washington Square. We did this on our walk home. Washington Square Park is close to the University buildings and is therefore a popular hangout for students. It's a good place to stop for an ice cream. West again takes you to the edge of Greenwich Village. I'm not sure if there are any really spectacular sights here. The main striking feature being the contrast in atmosphere with the leafy streets, lower rise brownstone buildings and new-age influenced small shops. Very different form the tall and busy Broadway.

Back on Broadway going south takes you through the shops of SoHo and gives you the chance to take in Little Italy and China Town to the east side as you go (we didn't).

Just past St Paul's Chapel you come to the World Trade Center Site. You need to keep your eyes open so as not to pass it. The site at the moment is deliberately low-key. There are a few signs pointing it out but they are small and easy to miss. The site is surrounded by a construction fence. There are a couple of storyboards attached to the fence, but that's it. Novelty sellers are kept at an almost respectable distance.

Head further south and you get to the lovely Battery Park. This is nice for two reasons. Firstly, it’s attractive in itself with its trees and statues, but it also gives a good view point for the southern tip of the Manhattan skyline. It’s also close to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. You can take a free ride on the Ferry (every 30 minutes when we were there) to Staten Island for good photo opportunities of the Manhattan skyline, and less good views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I may be wrong and I apologise if I'm doing it an injustice, but the one thing most tourists do when they get to Staten Island is turn around, which we did. (Sorry). But there are no obvious reasons to stay when you leave the ferry terminal.

All in all, this is a tiring but continually interesting walk. It'll take you five hours or more if you walk both ways, but your reward is a multitude of world-famous sights and maybe one or two surprises.