Getaway to New York City
Vacation Ideas

I've been there so many times that now I have it down to a routine. I fly in to LaGuardia and go straight to my favorite hotel in Manhattan, the Hotel Elysee.

It's not the fanciest place in Manhattan, but it's clean, it's reasonably priced, the bathrooms are large enough to turn around in, free snacks and drinks are available whenever you want something, and the staff will bend over backward to get you anything else you ask for.

Once I'm checked in, I usually start my getaway to New York City with a trip to one of the many great museums in the city. Usually this will be The Frick. It’s one of my favorite museums.

By museum standards, it's on the small side, but that's because it wasn't originally a museum, but a house. A mansion really, on what is now known as Museum Row, overlooking Central Park.

It's incredible to think that one man owned and lived in the place, because not only is it a large property in a prime location, but the contents of the house are jaw-dropping.

The place is dripping with Gainsborough’s paintings, and amongst its many other treasures, it boasts some of the most beautiful paintings Whistler ever set brush to.

Most startling of all, the two very best paintings ever created by Hans Holbein the Younger, court painter for Henry the VIII, hang here. His portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cranmer flank the fireplace where someone of more modest means might hang their kids' graduation pictures.

If anything ever belonged in London's Portrait Gallery, it's these two paintings, so when you trip across them unexpectedly in New York, it's enough to make you faint. The place closes down at 6:00, which means they kick you out at 5:30, giving you time to find a nice restaurant and get in a meal before taking in a Broadway play.

I personally like to go to Junior's and have a piece of cheesecake and an egg cream. Junior’s is famous for its fantastic cheesecake and I can personally attest to it. After the cheesecake I then go to a musical show.

The last time I went, I saw Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch in A Little Night Music. The first time I saw that play, I hated it, but cast is everything. In the hands of Peters and Stritch, every character was lovable, every joke worked, and every song brought tears to your eyes.

They might not be on stage when you're in town, but there's sure to be somebody you've always wanted to see in person starring in something, somewhere, transforming it in the process from so-so to amazing.

After a sound night's sleep in one of the cleanest hotel rooms in the world, I go home the next day having seen some of the most beautiful things in existence, sampled some of the finest food ever cooked, and experienced one of the best theatrical performances ever staged.

And usually, it hasn't cost me more than five hundred dollars. So, as you can see, one of my favorite vacation ideas is a quick getaway to New York City. Try it and you might get hooked like me.

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