It was the weekend before Christmas, and the air had a sharp, crisp bite to it. My kids and I laced up our skates and stepped onto the ice rink at New York's famous Rockefeller Center. In a blink, my nine-year-old son, Nick, was off, racing around the rink at high speed. Wobbling on my rental skates with my seven-year-old daughter, Jessie, I had a little more time to take in the scene: flags from every nation snapping in the wind; illuminated skyscrapers; and America's most famous Christmas tree, the 82-foot Norway spruce. The strains of Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" blaring from the speakers finally inspired us to let go of the handrail and join the blur of skaters.
As we did, my son zipped by, red-cheeked and happy. "This is one of the best days of my life," he said.
We'd never have heard those words if we'd bought the notion that New York is too costly and intimidating for family travelers. Nonsense. When we were visiting the city, in fact, it was bustling with more tourists than it'd seen in a decade. And my husband Pat, the kids and I discovered it's not as pricey as you might think to enjoy an overnight getaway, one where free and inexpensive entertainment abounds.
Our first budget challenge was lodging. New York hotels can be prohibitively expensive, but we called around for a deal and found one at the Super 8 Hotel in midtown Manhattan; rooms start at $89 nightly. Once we'd found a place to stay, our strategy included mixing no-cost and low-cost stops with a few special, even once-in-a-lifetime, treats.
Take our skating adventure. By New York standards, it was a deal. It cost $42 for three of us (Pat decided to sit this one out) to rent skates and enjoy 90 minutes of ice time. Yes, that's far more than at our local rink. But it's far less than, say, a Broadway show where a single ticket can cost about $75.
With a hunger worked up from skating, we took a short walk to the Official All-Star Cafe, a big hit with my sports-minded kids. The popular restaurant has seventy wide-screen televisions, booths in the shape of baseball gloves, and wall displays featuring Babe Ruth's jacket and Monica Seles' tennis racket. At $8.50 for a giant burger and fries, this stop was one of our splurges. And the thrill of watching the kids race off to find Shaq's shorts made it worth every cent.
One of the best New York bargains is strolling down famous Fifth Avenue and looking at the glittering department store windows. We started at Saks Fifth Avenue, where the story of a little boy and the sandman unfolded over a long row of windows. As we made our way up toward FAO Schwarz's window display, we spotted huge red Christmas tree ornaments that had hooks taller than the kids, 12-foot-long candy canes, and trees decked out with so many white lights it looked as though "lightning bugs lived in them," our daughter noted. In one window, a nattily attired moose was ice fishing.
We eventually wound up in Central Park, where we encountered a street carnival of in-line skaters, sidewalk painters, and vendors selling hot roasted chestnuts and pretzels. We also visited the Central Park Zoo.
By midafternoon, it was time for a little R&R. We took the subway (tokens are $1.50 each) back to the hotel and rested until dinnertime. We hailed a cab ($5.25) south to Greenwich Village, passing the Empire State Building, which was awash in red and green light
The next morning, after omelets and pancakes at Nino's Trattoria, we took the subway up to The Children's Museum of Manhattan, which features fun, educational activities geared to kids ages two through 12. In the television studio, Jessie edited sports footage, while Nick wrote a song on the synthesizer. The kids played xylophones and made Christmas tree ornaments in the art studio. We could have stayed all day, but instead we took the subway down to Battery Park for a somewhat chilly ride on the Staten Island Ferry. From the boat, we saw the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Our final destination was Chinatown. Walking along the street, we listened in fascination to the mélange of languages and watched vendors sell cabbage, carrots and fish. The kids bought green tea for an aunt and some souvenir trinkets. We enjoyed a late lunch by stopping at several different little Chinese restaurants for dim sum, where you choose the specialties you want from a cart (our bill totaled $4 to $5 at each place). The kids tried their hands at chopsticks and filled up on noodles and dumplings.
On the train ride back to our house in Connecticut, both children drifted contentedly off to sleep. We were happy, too. We'd managed to catch the holiday spirit—and found a few big-city bargains to boot.
Jackie Fitzpatrick, a writer and high school teacher, lives with her family in Connecticut.
Please keep in mind that phone numbers, addresses, and prices are subject to change. Updated July 2005.
