Frequent Miler on the Air - Visiting New York City without breaking the bank | Coffee Break Ep121 | 9-2-26

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Get 15% of on Saily E-SimsThis podcast episode is sponsored by Saily. Saily is an ESIM service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saily gives you flexible prepaid data plans in over 200 destinations worldwide. Download Saily from your app store and use our code FREQUENTMILER at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. https://saily.com/frequentmilerNew York is an expensive city. Today, we'll talk about tips to make it more affordable using points, credit card benefits, and smart stacking.(00:52) - Flights: No one-size-fits-all option here, but consider...(05:47) - Favorite points hotel options(17:47) - Saving money on stuff to do(20:21) - Saving money with credit card benefits(27:24) - Tips for what to do while you're thereSubscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderCheck out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of the Voyascape Network, a collection of some of the world’s best travel podcasts. Explore more at Voyascape.com. For advertising or sponsorship opportunities on this show and across the network, email [e-mail] or you can find more information at Voyascape.com/advertsing.

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Today's coffee break, visiting New York City without breaking the bank. Welcome to Frequent Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. Each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. New York can be a very expensive destination. There's no doubt about it. but with some techniques using your credit card points and your credit card and deal stacking

smarts you can save some money and so today it's going to be me nick and tim is joining me say hi tim hello tim there you go with gregg out this week so we're going to talk new york city on points remember wherever you're watching or listening don't forget to like the video subscribe enable notifications leave us your comments and your tips for saving in new york city so that other folks can benefit from some of your tips as well. All right, let's hop right into some of this. So I wanted to start out with flights because this is something that I don't want to belabor. It's too hard to give you all of the various tips from all the various destinations in the United States, but there are at least a few ways to save points and get cheap flights.

Of top my head, first of all, the thing that comes to mind is if you don't live very far from New York City, there are some sweet spots that you should keep in mind in check. First of all, short Delta flights can be booked with Air France-KLM flying blue miles, starting from 5,000 miles each way. My home airport is Albany, New York, and Albany to LaGuardia is 5,000 Air France miles when it's available. Delta only makes those seats available to partners at least 21 days in advance, so that's not something you're going to be able to book at the last minute. But if you live not too far from New York, that's a way you can pay very few miles with Delta. By the same token, if you live a short distance and you'd rather fly AA, American Airlines, short American Airlines flights can sometimes be both. through Alaska Atmos for 4,500 miles in economy, 9,000 in business, or short distance

United Airlines flights can be booked via Air India. Air India Maharaja Club is a Rove Miles transfer partner, and those can be booked from 3,500 miles each way. I recently booked my first United Award via Air India, and it was smooth and easy. It was a simple process for me, so I transferred from Rove, and I was able to book myself a flight. So if you live a short distance, those are some options. Another option if you're on the East Coast somewhere is Amtrak. If you don't have any of the Amtrak cards, they might be worth picking up when there's an elevated bonus. Amtrak points are often worth about 2.9 cents per point. And that can really go a long way on the train. No pun intended. So if you live a train ride away, that is something to keep in mind. There's nobody that transfers to Amtrak. So

you're going to have to get an Amtrak card if you want Amtrak points. And I sat on a recent episode that the Amtrak card is one that's always on my radar, and the next time there's an elevated bonus, I'm going to have to go after it. Now, that was all relevant if you live a short distance from New York City. But Tim, you don't live a short distance from New York City. I live almost as far away from New York City as you can possibly get without being in the ocean. And still in the U.S., I should say. So how do you get to New York? What do you do? So I think there's not a, from the West Coast, What's tricky about the West Coast is that, and first let me apologize because we're sort of disregarding everybody between the West Coast and the East Coast.

And there's very different things from Chicago or from Omaha or from Topeka or wherever else also. But from the West Coast, you really only have a handful of departure airports for what are very long flights. And while there can be great fair sales, especially what I've learned is Tuesday, Wednesday, Departures, Saturday and Saturday returns are terrific to go transcontinental. Most business people are always traveling on Mondays and coming back on Fridays, and most tourists from around the entire country are going back on Sunday nights. So if you can stick away from there, there can be some great both cash fairs and point sales as well.

And what I've found in Seattle anyway, where I fly out of is oftentimes, especially offseason, and there's some great Delta Flash sales. I've seen fares across the country for as low as 7,000, 8,000 sky miles one way. And even Alaska can sometimes be, or can have sales that I've seen Alaska go down as low as, you know, 10,000, 9,000 on a fair sale. Now, one thing I think that bears mention is that cash fares oftentimes aren't as high as you might think they would be, especially when you're outside of peak times. And what I love doing is with the American Express Business Platinum, I can book Alaska.

Alaska is my preferred airline, so I can book Alaska flights at a rate of 1.54 cents per mile. And I earn miles on that flight. So it's about a 2,500 mile flight. So a lot of times I'm not just comparing the cash fare, but I'm comparing the cash fare, or the points fair to what it would take for me to use membership rewards points to book that cash fare and get miles back.

Because effectively, with my bonuses with elite status, one round trip to New York gets me enough miles for another one way to New York. So that actually is probably the most common way that I book from the West Coast because flights really aren't as much more expensive from the Midwest or the East Coast as you might think to New York. However, yeah, that's a great tip. Yeah, and especially because of the increased distances, not, you know, most of them, most airlines award miles based on revenue,

but Alaska does not. So if you're flying with Alaska, it's worth checking out, especially if you have a platinum card and take advantage of that. But once I'm there, you know, I've gone to New York a lot over the years, but you live in New York, so you spend a lot of time there. What are some of your favorite places to stay? There is, I think New York, I remember seeing that New York has something like 800,000 hotel rooms or 900,000 hotel rooms. Hotels are all over Manhattan.

They're all over Brooklyn. But what have been your favorites as you've gone there with your family over the years? Yeah. So it's funny, how many rooms there are you would think rooms would be less expensive than they are. But New York can be really pricey at times. And it's times it can be really, surprisingly reasonable. It just really depends on when you're going. But yeah, so there are a number of places that come to mind for me.

And when Tim says I live in New York, I live in New York State, but I'm about a three-hour drive from New York City. So there's no reasonable public transportation options. We're usually driving to New York City when we go and staying for a night or two. And we go a few times each year. So there are a few places that stand out to me. And all of the places I'm going to share are in Manhattan. But that's because most of the time when we're going, we're going for some sort of an event that's in Manhattan.

I think that it's totally worth getting out and exploring some of the other boroughs. But we just haven't done that on a trip where we're staying overnight. I've been in all the other boroughs, but not on a trip where I wasn't visiting family or something of that sort already. So in Manhattan, probably my favorite points bookable hotel, probably, is the luxury collection in Manhattan. So this is a Marriott property. It used to be a Hilton property. It used to be the Conrad Midtown, but it became a luxury collection property at some point. This is right smack in the middle of Midtown.

I didn't actually look up the address, but I'm going to guess 45th Street or so. I'm pretty sure that's close, or maybe it's actually 50th. But at any rate, somewhere around Midtown, not too far from a lot of the other top places that you might consider in that area. The reason I like this is most of the rooms in this hotel are suites. and they're true one-bedroom suites with doors that separate the bedroom from the living room. They're spacious rooms,

not just by New York standards, they're just spacious. They feel like little mini apartments almost. And they're nice. Like the furniture is nice. The beds are nice. It seems kind of upscale. And that stands out to me in New York

because you might expect that there are plenty of nice hotels in New York. And there are, but some hotels that are quite expensive aren't necessarily well-maintained. And this place has been in my experience. So I really like it.

for that. I think you've stayed here before too, right? I have. Yeah, it's a great place. And, and like you said, I find it notable for the room size. It's the, the room sizes are, unusually spacious by Manhattan standards. Yeah, for sure. It can often be booked with an 85K free night certificate with a Marriott 85K free night certificate. It used to cost less, and it may vary. I haven't tracked prices at this place very closely, but it's an option and it's usually reasonable-ish value. You're not going to get way out-sized value from Marriott points, but for a free night certificate, I think it can certainly be worth it. For Hyatt, my favorite, and I hesitate a little bit on this, but I think my favorite would be

the Thompson Central Park. This is a little bit further up from, you know, when I say up, I mean farther north in Manhattan, pretty close to Central Park. Probably my favorite Hyatt, and I give that a bit of an asterisk because the what's now the Hyatt-centric Wall Street is also one I like and the Beekman I liked as well. But this is a little. This is kind of my go-to when I'm going to New York in general, the Thompson Central Park. And that's for a couple of reasons, one of which is service is always good. I'm always happy, pleasantly surprised at how friendly it is. And I think New York has sort of an inaccurate representation of not being friendly.

I think New Yorkers in general are friendly. I don't always find staff in hotels to be friendly, though. And the Thompson, I feel like I definitely get that vibe. Parking is free for globalists on an awards day. breakfast is decent. The rooms, well, I've often gotten upgraded to a studio there, and that's relatively spacious by Manhattan standards. Not as big as the luxury collection property, but comfortable.

A couch, a sofa, and a TV that turns around from the bed and a little bit of a table. So I tend to like the Thompson Central Park. Have you stayed there? Do you have any thoughts about that property? No, you know, I never have. I've always, I really like staying right by Central Park, and there's only a handful of hotels that are kind of right on those border streets. And I've looked at the Thompson multiple times, but it always seems to be on peak pricing or not.

I mean, it's super popular on awards days. So it's just never the price of it combined with what was available, never quite, hasn't quite matched up. But I'd love to try it sometime. I've heard great things. Yeah, I like it. I like it. The hotel itself, it has long been popular, and I don't mean to say that it's a bad hotel, but it's not, the rooms aren't particularly well maintained, and I hate the showers.

The showers are awful, and the bathroom design in general is just really bad. So I'm not a huge fan of the Andaz. However, the location is really hard to beat if you want to be in Midtown, directly across to the New York Public Library, Brian Park behind that, you got easy walking distance to Times Square, easy walking. to this is to Grant Central. We end up staying there almost every year because the location is so good. Now, unfortunately, award prices have climbed up. So it's not always a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination at this point, particularly as things have gone up. But it's one that I think is probably worth keeping in mind. Do you like it more than I do? I don't think more than you do, but I like it as well as you do. Yeah, for sure. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. And then last but at least,

the Conrad downtown. I like it. Quiet location right by the water. It kind of feels like it's off on a side street. And there's a beautiful little walking area along the water. The flowers blooming in the summertime. There's oftentimes live music on the weekends outside there. It's a surprisingly lively spot. You would think financial district downtown, not real lively. And during the weekends, it isn't necessarily overall. But that I find that walkway by the water is so nice and relaxing and more life there than you might expect in that part of Manhattan. Yeah, totally. And I think actually, that's one thing. When I first started going to New York, I just assumed that all of the neighbor,

the first time I actually went to New York, I was going to the U.S. Open, which was in Queens, and I decided to get a place, an apartment in Brooklyn, not realizing what I was doing to myself. And at that point, I realized after, you know, multiple hour and a half subway rides and getting caught up in Queens at 4 o'clock in the morning and all sorts of things, I realized that location is very important in New York. And one of the things that I didn't realize initially was that Wall Street is really cheap on the weekends. That all those hotels in the financial district, they're expensive during the week. But then on the weekends, oftentimes you can find some great deals there, both in terms of off-peak pricing for points and for cash fares as well. And I personally, you know,

There's kind of, there's, there's, there's everything that's south of Central Park in New York, there's kind of, there's two main areas. There's lower Manhattan, which is sort of down at the very cone at the bottom of Manhattan. And there's Midtown where all the theaters are and all the big buildings and all of the studios and Central Park is right at the top of that. And that's by and large where all the tourist activities are, where the vast majority of the hotels are. I really, really like staying in lower Manhattan, partially because it's very walkable and there's some great neighborhoods. It feels more neighborhoody instead of being in a bunch of in the middle of a bunch of skyscrapers.

And I like exactly what Nick just said is there's a lot of really great walking paths around the water on both sides of the island that are just really fantastic places. And the last time that my wife and I were there, we stayed at there's a or JDV by Hyatt property called Hotel 50. That's right. it's on kind of in the lower east side Chinatown area that is a it's a category five so on peak it can go up to 35,000 but off peak can go all the way down to 15,000 points per night, which these days is really cheap for a hotel in New York. And what's great is because you're in this, it's small. I want to say there's maybe nine, 10 rooms per floor.

It goes up about 21 floors and that would be a tiny building in Midtown. But there in lower Manhattan, it's actually sort of standing up. up. So every single room just gets great views of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Midtown Manhattan. And I mean, you really, you would have a great view with like a fifth floor room, six floor room. It has a, there's not a lot of public areas because it's a fairly narrow building, but it has this great full floor lounge that's open to guests where you have seating areas, ping pong, shuffleboard. There's an outdoor area to hang out with fire pits. It's a really cool area. And then on the top, they have a roof top bar with killer views that during the day is open and free for guests and they have free coffee and tea. So if you're going up there, you can like hang

out. You're welcome to bring up food and bring the kids up and like hang out on the patio and have free coffee and tea. It's a really, it's a really great location. And that's one of the, kind of one of my recent favorites for New York that I would probably return to. Now the one thing that I will mention about staying in lower Manhattan is that you are at ways away from midtown. So it's probably at minimum from this hotel about a 15, 20 minute train ride to, and it could be longer up to like, I'd say 30 minutes to anywhere that you want to go. So if you're staying, if you have like theater tickets and shows and things that you're going to in midtown every night and you have kids, it may not be the best place to go just because you're going to be spending

a lot of time going back for from the subway. And then the one thing that I will say, probably one of the most famous points, bookable hotels in Manhattan is the Park Hyatt. It's very well known. It's extremely expensive. It's very well known for its pool. It's got this really cool pool skylight area.

It's got great suites. They have a magnificent room service breakfast for Globalists where they wheel in this whole tray and set up a table for two that you can, or more, that you can eat in front of the windows there. It's a great hotel. It is ridiculously expensive on points now. Now that Hyatt has increased the points price on it,

it can go up to 75,000 points per night. And the very lowest price, the lowest of the low prices, is 35,000 points per night. And to me, and this may not be a popular opinion, I would never pay that to stay at the Park Hyatt. It has, it's gone from being kind of a fun, Plurgy Hotel to something that it's like if I was going there for three nights, I would never spend 160,000, 170,000, up to 200,000 points to stay at the Park Hyatt versus being able to

spend half that on another hotel that is in a similar location. Yeah, I agree. You know, the Park Hyatt I've stayed and I liked it when I stayed years ago when it didn't cost nearly as many points, but I have the same feeling about it. I can book so many nights at other properties for the cost of a single night at the park high at New York. It just, it doesn't offer enough. I don't think to justify the increased cost unless you're just really flush with points. And you want that splurgy, splashy stay. But it wouldn't be for me anyway at this point.

So I would agree with you there. So let's talk about saving money on other things that you can do in New York. So I know that you recently attended a show, I think, right? A Broadway show or two, maybe. It did. Stranger things. Highly recommended. Yeah.

So how did you get tickets? So there's, you know, for shows, and this is stuff that we do. We are, my wife and I will do both of these. And we'll oftentimes go to Broadway shows. And one thing that I think sometimes people forget, there's a lot of TV shows that are taped in New York City. And tickets to them are free, provided you sign up for them far enough in advance. And it can be a great afternoon. They have, they're usually filmed in the afternoon.

You'll go, show up. They have a warm-up comedian that'll do a 20 or 30-minute set to get the crowd warmed up. Then you get to go through the entire show. And then there's usually a Q&A with who's ever hosting the show afterwards. So it's a really fun thing that you can do for free, as long as you sign up in advance. And there's a, I believe that there's kind of one common booking site for it now. I think it's called One Iota or One Oda or something like that. I have it in the post that I just wrote about going to New York.

But as long as you, like if you're thinking about going to New York, look and see what shows might be there and put your name in for a couple of shows. If you don't get the tickets, great. If you do, it's a really fun thing. The other thing for Broadway shows is there's two ways. Most Broadway shows now have what are called rush tickets, where they are auctions, effectively lotteries for really cheap tickets that you register usually either 24 or 48 hours before the day of your show.

and then they will email you if you actually win the lottery. And you can get tickets. Some of them they'll go down. Hamilton, I think, is still $10. Some of them go down to like $30, $40. And they're actually really good tickets. That can be a great way to just put your name in for a bunch of shows that you're interested in seeing.

And then just to see what comes up. And then there's also two, there's Today Tics. And then there's another one called TKTS or Tickets. Tickets. You actually have, there's two booths. There's one near Columbia Circle and there's one in Times Square. The Columbia Circle one always has way less traffic. You can get tickets day of show for 50 to 70% off sometimes.

And again, very good tickets. And you can look online these days and actually see what they have available. And today, Tix is another one. I haven't used that as much, but they also have discounted tickets that day of get quite a bit cheaper. So now that you've been busy doing stuff, though, you're going to need to eat somewhere. So are there, I'm sure you've had a lot of opportunity to eat all over Manhattan. What are ways you can actually save money or use your credit card benefits while you're doing it?

Well, if you want to save money, just go get a 99 cent slice somewhere. And Native New Yorkers are going to say that that's heresy of the 99 cents slice, but I don't mind the 99 cents slice. Anyway, there's a lot of great pizza places. But I think a couple of ways to save money. First of all, in-kind. In-kind gift cards can often be purchased, even off. online from Costco. You can, uh, sometimes when they go on sale, we usually report it.

And sometimes you can buy a $100 gift card for 70 or even $65. So I mean, think of that as saving 35% on the cost of a restaurant. That's a, that's a pretty good deal. Right off the bat. And if you sign up with a referral or you refer your player to, then you can both potentially earn some more money off of a dine or whatnot. So definitely worth looking at in kind. And in kind has a range of restaurants. And actually, you can even get restaurant delivery in some cases through in kind in New York. So it's worth taking a look there. I think it's probably worth a mention that there are some really good restaurants on there too.

Like Union Square Hospitality has a bunch of their restaurants on there. They've got a couple with Michelin Stars that are unkind, Gramercy Tavern and the Modern, both are Michelin Star restaurants that are unkind. So again, you're not going to get very many opportunities to save 35% on that type of a restaurant. So it's nice to be able to potentially save quite a bit there. And, you know, there are lots of great restaurants in New York, so you don't necessarily want to keep yourself just stuck to that list. But there are other ways with your credit cards. For instance, MX Resi credits. I mean, my goodness, there's tons of different resi restaurants. There are quite a lot of Chase Sapphire Exclusive tables restaurants. If you're a Sapphire Reserve card holder, you're looking to use that benefit. So, you know, both platinum card holders and Sapphire Reserve card holders are kind of spoiled for choice in New York. Did you recently eat in any places that you have? would say should be at the top of somebody's list? Yeah, well, you know, not necessarily at the top of somebody's list, but just to kind of co-sign what you said about Resi, I don't, New York may be the best

city in the entire United States to use your Resi credits. And this last quarter, we had four of them to four $100 credits. And we, my wife and I knew that we'd be going to New York at the end of the quarter. So we just saved them all. And then each night when we had, when we went to a different location. Like one night we were going to a taping at the Daily Show. One night we went to Stranger Things. One night we were just hanging out. We would just look at a, to see the Resi restaurants that were around where we wanted to. One night we wanted something with a patio. So we found this kind of older Greek restaurant that had a terrific outdoor patio and we hung out there. We were going to Stranger Things. There's just, there's a lot of option,

all kinds of cuisine, very good restaurants. It's just a really great place to use your Resi credits. And you're not necessarily missing out on great food by confining yourself to list, especially now that talk is getting folded into Resi. I mean, it's just, it's almost hard to describe how much variety you have there. So it's a great place to burn Resi credits. But so one of the things that I think people, like when I first, when I first, I remember when I first went to New York and landed at the airport, I went outside and I asked a taxi driver what the fair would be to get downtown.

I thought I was getting ripped off because I thought there was no way that the taxied from JFK to downtown Manhattan could actually be that much. Well, it is. It's expensive to get around New York. And the railways, the subway, they're cheap options. But are there other ways that we can use credit card benefits to sort of get to and from the airport or even just to get around Manhattan easily? Yeah. So actually, when you mentioned there that subway and Long Island Railroad or train or whatever can be affordable, I tip that I caught from somebody online at some point was if you're traveling with a family and you want to take public transit into the city, the air train from JFK to, you know, where you would catch like Long Island Railroad, Jamaica Station or whatever,

the, the air train you can buy, you know what I made that up. I think it was from LaGuardia's what I'm thinking of. The air train, you can buy a 10 pack of tickets for less than what the cost of 10 tickets would be. And in fact, I did that at one point because I paid less for four of us to go one way by using the 10-pack because you don't have to use them separately. You could use all 10 of them to ride in one direction at one time if you wanted. So it was less expensive, I think, for the four of us to ride one way, buying the 10-pack of tickets and just wasting the rest of them because they have to be used within 30 days or something. But certainly if you're going round-trip. Hey, Nick, I just got a text from my cousin. He's asking me about a credit card offer he just got in

his email and asking if it's any good. Yeah, well, your cousin ought to go. to frequent myler.com and click the link at the top of the page for our best offers page. That's the best way for your cousin to know whether or not they're getting a good offer because we're committed to publishing the best publicly available offers. So if you see an offer for a credit card anywhere on the internet, you should always compare and make sure you're getting the best possible offer. Look into the 10 pack because it can save you on the air train. Okay. That aside, obviously if you've got Uber credits to use, you can use Uber to get around.

I mean, you can also use it for Uber Eats. I frequently do use my Uber credits for Uber Eats when we're in New York because I've got kids. So finding a restaurant where we want to sit down and eat is sometimes difficult. So I love this place called Ty Vila that I can get on Uber Eats. And so I always order from Tyville, even if I'm not eating at that night, I order and bring it home. I'm a big fan. But when it comes to getting around New York, another option is Black Lane.

So you might be familiar with Black Lane. they're like a chauffeur service, sort of like a high-end Uber. So more expensive than Uber, but it's a driver that's waiting for you, just for you, et cetera. And they're more expensive, so a lot of people don't consider them for like a ride from the airport because it can be pricey. Although, depending on the time of day, it could be reasonable if you have a card that offers a blackling credit like the city strata elite card that offers a $100 credit twice a year once January, June, once July to December, at least make it. But keep in mind also, you can have on-demand

rides with Black Lane within Manhattan. So if you want to stay at Tim's Hotel 50 Bowery, but you want to go to a show in Midtown, take a look at Black Lane because it will be more expensive than an Uber, but it may not be so much more expensive that it's a bad deal, particularly if you're using one of those credits, like the Strata Elite credits. So it's worth being aware because Black Lane in general is not an on-demand service. It's a scheduled chauffeur service. But in Select Cities, New York and Miami, among them, it can't be a rides on-demand service.

Yeah, and one thing I would add on to that is when you're comparing the cost of a Black Lane ride to say an Uber or a Lyft ride, it's worth noting that Black Lane, the tip is included in the cost. So there's no additional cost beyond the top of the Black Lane ride. So take your Uber cost or whatever it would cost to do an Uber ride, add 15%, 20%, whatever it is you normally tip on Uber rides, and compare that to your Black Lane cost, because that's the real apples to apples comparison.

Great point there. All right, so what about, you know, you got there, you got around, you got from the airport to wherever you're going. Do you have any tips? I mean, I know you've been in New York a lot of times. Do you have any tips for things to do that maybe wouldn't necessarily be at the top of the typical tourist list that you've enjoyed in New York?

Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that I just recently did with my wife that I've been wanting to do for a long time. And actually, what I would say in general, I'm a big national park buff. Take a look at the national parks of New York City and New York Harbor. They're not national parks per se. They're national park units that are things like national historic sites or national monuments, things like that. Almost exclusively, they're almost all free. They have really fun stuff. They have junior ranger programs. They have free tours you can do. We went and we went to Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace and took a free tour of the house and the neighboring house. It was really cool.

But one of those things is there's an island just off the southern tip of Manhattan called Governor's Island. That for years it was a military base for a time. It was an actual prison for a time. And I want to say all the year round or the people that actually lived there year round were, were evacuated or left somewhere like in the 80s or 90s or something. But now it's half a historic site, half a preserve, but it's a really cool spot. You can go there, you can rent bikes to go to, like, scoot around. There's a trail that goes around the entire island.

There's some fun little hiking trails, great playgrounds. There's a fun restaurant that at night it faces lower Manhattan. So you've got this great view of Manhattan, and they took a bunch of sand to make a beach. And at night, it's this really exclusive $250 per person, like beach bar experience type thing. But during the day, it's just a little taco bar that you could go in for like $15, get some actually pretty good tacos and literally have lunch with your toes in the sand looking over Manhattan. It's five bucks round trip for the ferry. It's a fun ferry ride. And then even on Saturday mornings, it's free in the morning.

So if you take the ferry ride out in the morning, it's a free ride for you and your family. and then you can take the ride back for free as well. It's really a fun excursion from Lower Manhattan that doesn't cost a lot. Very good. Speaking of excursions from that, that's a great tip. I actually haven't gone, and I should one of these days.

So I like that tip. Another one for a relatively cheap little excursion that I think can be cool is if you take the A train from Manhattan to the first stop in Brooklyn, I think it's Brooklyn Heights. And you can just ask the person working at the booth, which way you walk to get to the Brooklyn Promenade or use your phone and navigate to the Brooklyn Promenade. It's a couple of blocks from there. It's worth doing it night if you want like that

postcard view of the New York City skyline and then you see the whole thing from across the water and you get like that, that view that you see in photographs of New York. So I really like that. It's like an easy free thing to do. It's a nice little walk. I haven't done it in a few years now. So I guess look that up and check it out. There's a content creator on Facebook that I keep running across. I'm sure she's probably on Instagram and other things as well. So her page is called Experience the Big Apple, NYC, and her catchphrases follow me for more NYC. But she's got all these really cool reels about some of the things that you might not even realize you're walking past in terms of the history of New York. So that's an account that I've really enjoyed following actually,

just personally for little tidbits all the time. And it's not necessarily that you're going to go out of your way to visit those things, but it's kind of cool. And if you're staying in a neighborhood that's got something, you might want to go check it out and learn something new. So that's an account that I like to follow for it. Again, it's just tips about things you're seeing artwork. If you visit certain places, things that you may not have known to look for. And so I find her tips really unique and interesting. So that's one that I like.

Yeah. So, I mean, that's a pretty good range of different tips and ideas. You got anything more for New York City? Well, you know, honestly, I think we could probably talk for quite some time. New York City's got a lot there. There's a lot to do. There's a lot to see. There's a lot of money to spend.

But speaking of spending money, I think we already owe a pretty substantial refund here. So we should probably just call it quits for today. We should. Refunds for everyone on going over 20 minutes on today's coffee break. But hopefully those are some tips that help you enjoy your trip to New York. And if you've got more tips for us, leave them in the comments. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder.

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