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Planning a trip can be daunting. I have several friends
that travel all the time and I honestly don't know how they do it. Planning this NYC trip stressed me out, but I found a few sites and apps that eased that stress significantly and hopefully you can plan a trip without the stress at all.
The first site I would recommend is booking.com. When we were trying to find a hotel, it was overwhelming. There are so many travel sites out there that claim to offer the best deals. I tried them all. I compared prices to hotel sites themselves, and several others and booking.com gave us the best deal. Booking the reservation was easy and check-in was easier.
Visit A City was a fabulous app I stumbled upon. I am a planner so I was trying to make my itinerary, but researching all the places we wanted to visit and trying to line them all up in a geographical order was taking me hours. Somehow the visit a city site popped up on my computer and I thought I would try it out. It was amazing. It asks you what type of trip you are taking; family, girls trip, if you're museum buffs, etc. Then it auto-populates an itinerary. From there you can delete places you are not interested in and add other places you are interested in. I was even able to add in our hotel and it would tell you how far it would take you between places. Granted, I knew we wouldn't be able to stick to the plan perfectly, but it was a fantastic starting point. It at least helped me get the places we wanted to see on certain days so we weren't going all over the city. During the trip, I would update it; if we didn't make it to one place, I'd add it to another day. It was a great resource for the planner in me!
There are several pass options for NYC. I compared them all and ultimately decided on My City Pass. It was perfect for us. We had 4 days in the city and we wanted to hit all the major attractions. My City Pass includes 5 main attractions. It automatically includes: The Empire State Building & The American Museum of Natural History. Then you can choose 3 others from: Top of The Rock Observation Deck, Ferry Access to Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises, Intrepid Museum, and Guggenheim Museum.
Scheduling the tickets through the app was very easy and such a time-saver, not to mention money saver. I encourage you to research all 4 pass options for NYC, but this one was the best fit for us and what we wanted to do.
Google Maps
This one was probably the most helpful. Before we went, I tried to find an app to help me navigate the subway system, but I couldn't find one that was very helpful. I just happened to type in an address to where we were going and saw a tiny bus looking icon. I had no idea Google Maps had a subway route. It told me what station to enter, what train to take, when that train would arrive, how many stops to ride and what station to exit. It was a lifesaver because our first entrance into the subway station, we looked helpless. Eventually, we looked like pros!
If you plan a trip and use any of these sites, let me know how it goes and
Happy Trip Planning!
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