New York On The Cheap

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Lindor Reynolds with her daughters Haley Dempsey (left) and Kate Reynolds at Top of the Rock.

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Katz Delicatessen on the Lower East Side of New York City is popular with tourists and locals alike.

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The view of the Hudson river from one of the rooms at The Jane Hotel. (AP)

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Haley and Kate on front steps of a New York walk-up.

NEW YORK -- Our mission was simple. We were three women heading to New York, looking to cram in all the culture, shopping and cuisine possible.

The complicating factor? We didn't want to go broke doing it.

New York can be staggeringly expensive. Turn one corner and you're in front of a shop where the security guards are better dressed than you. Turn another and you're looking at a restaurant where lunch for one will set you back more than $100.

We were three hicks from Winnipeg. We weren't going to experience high society New York.

My 23-year-old daughter, Kate Reynolds, flew down first. She had done her Internet research and scored a room at Jane Hotel (113 Jane St.) in the West Village. Rooms are only 50 square metres and not designed for the claustrophobic.

The hotel honestly bills the rooms as cabins and has modelled them after train sleeping rooms. The bathroom is down the hall.

The cost for this? Just US$79.

That was plenty of room for the adventurous traveller. There was a cafe downstairs and it was a terrific location close to a subway stop and all the hipster hangouts.

Kate got to know the city by touring the United Nations, riding the subway, eating sandwiches in Central Park and listening to buskers.

Dinner for Kate one night was a cheap, greasy pizza accompanied by people-watching. New York-style, of course. Another night it was dinner at actor Ricky Gervais' local resto.

A day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art cost $20. It was money well spent.

My daughter, Haley Dempsey, and I arrived three days later. I may be cheap but I didn't want to share a bathroom with strangers. Haley was celebrating her 19th birthday so we'd hit the Internet looking for housing bargains.

They're few and far between in this city, especially if you don't want to sleep with a chair wedged up against the door.

We gambled and searched for an apartment online. Eventually, and based on price alone, we rented one from Kore Realty. It was described as luxury, which was overstating things a bit.

The apartment was a third-floor walk-up on West 73rd, a five-minute walk to Central Park. It was spacious, had two bedrooms and a full kitchen. The bathroom was in the apartment, thank you very much.

The three of us had more room than we needed.

There was a wine store nearby and a market where we could stock up on produce, juice and yogurt for breakfast.

The apartment also came with an authentic crazy Seinfeldian downstairs neighbour, a cranky woman who came up to complain about the noise when we were napping.

Cost of the apartment and the entertainment? A bargain at US$190 a night.

Next up was buying a Metro card. The New York subways are fast, relatively clean and much cheaper than hailing a yellow cab for every trip. It goes without saying that you're wearing comfortable shoes so you can hoof from your station to wherever you're going.

A one-day unlimited ride pass is $8.25. A seven-day pass is $27. You can go everywhere and get there faster than in a cab.

We were set. Because I have control issues, we had mapped out our itinerary. This was Haley's first trip to New York and we wanted to do it right.

Doing it right meant covering as many of the iconic sights as possible. First off, a visit to the NBC studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. It's $18.50, which is not cheap, but it's an interesting tour of the sets of various TV shows. There was the thrill of perhaps seeing a celebrity, which we didn't.

But we hit the NBC store, not realizing that the Conan O'Brien T-shirts might soon be collector's items.

If you fork over another 20 bucks, you can head up to Top of the Rock, an observatory with fabulous views of the city.

We saw the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and the Chrysler Building. A few photos later, the skyline had been thoroughly recorded.

We bought the tickets online and justified the cost by naming all the iconic buildings we could see in one fell swoop. A warning: Be on time. We weren't and had to pay a $5 rebooking fee per person for a tour that left 10 minutes later.

Lunch was a quick bite at a cheap deli, something that would become a mainstay of the trip.

A Broadway play was next. Although we could have bought same-day half-price tickets, birthday girl really wanted to see Wicked. I bought the tickets online, looked at the price and decided it represented all the fancy men I've never kept.

Dinner that night was at a small Mexican restaurant. It was decent, filled us up and the waiter was willing to overlook the fact that the legal drinking age is 21.

One margarita didn't cost that much.

A stroll down Fifth Avenue was free. The girls shopped at H & M and Forever 21, two insanely inexpensive stores. We walked around Saks just to smell the money.

Lunch day was at Katz's deli (205 E Houston St). This is the place where Meg Ryan famously faked an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. A sign hangs over one table. It proclaims: I'll have what she's having.

We sat there, of course.

It's a tourist attraction but it's also still a massive deli, slapping out sandwiches the size of your head accompanied by massive crispy pickles. You're given a ticket when you arrive, it's stamped when your order and you pay on the way out.

Lose your ticket and you pay $50. They're not kidding either.

We walked in Central Park, stopped by the Dakota, where John Lennon lived and was shot, and made a pilgrimage to FAO Schwarz. It was both free and priceless to watch the girls dance on the keyboard from the movie Big.

Dinner that night was Serendipity 3, a fun celebrity-spotting place featured in the Kate Beckinsale and John Cusak movie. No celebrities but a great meal.

For an afternoon of lazy fun, we went to the Strand bookstore (828 Broadway). They bill it as 18 miles of new, used and rare books. It's an amazing labyrinth, with a basement that winds and twists and takes you deeper and deeper into the depths of passionate reading. You can pass an hour or five climbing the rickety ladders and searching the tops of the dusty shelves, discovering treasures you have never met.

It's free until you hit the checkout and then you won't care.

Four days, three women and more than a few bucks. It was worth every penny.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 27, 2010 E1