The Jarvii My husband and I go to New York City every weekend at the end of August because he usually has a conference to attend that week for work. And one of my best friends lives up there too. My kids adore her and her husband, so they naturally kept bugging us when they would get to visit New York. At first I was a bit hesitant because at the time O was 5 and S was 3 and I honestly didn’t know what we could do up there with little kids. My childhood memories of visiting New York was seeing family and just eating in Chinatown. I visited as a teenager several times doing typical touristy things with friends in high school. And then of course the countless things you can do as an adult, sans children! But what can you do with two little kids? After talking to my friends about the possibilities, we decided to bite the bullet and do it for a weekend over spring break.
For anyone who has ever traveled to NYC from any city in the mid-Atlantic to Boston, Amtrak is probably the easiest and most convenient mode of transportation. It’s also a lot cheaper to take Amtrak if you buy your tickets early enough (I’ve found tickets for $150 roundtrip from DC). You don’t have to deal with airport security and the train literally stops in Midtown Manhattan. When you fly you usually have to take a long cab or subway ride from one of their three airports, which can take a long time depending on the time of day (at least half an hour). However, it isn’t quite obvious how a family with small children approach train travel versus airplane travel. For airplane travel it’s clear when family with young children get to board and there’s assigned seating. If you’ve ever taken a regional train on Amtrak with a coach ticket you know that it’s a free for all when it comes to boarding and finding a seat. And that was a biggest worry when you are loading up your gear and towing small kids. Never fear, there is a way!
First and foremost, you have to get to the train station early. This is such a foreign concept to anyone who has taken Amtrak because one of the beauties of it is you can literally rock up 30 minutes before your train departure and not stress about missing your train as you would your plane. We arrived an hour early to show the kids around the train station and pick up some snacks from the food court. Usually Amtrak doesn’t display what track your train will be boarding from until it’s a few minutes to boarding time. However, if you ask an Amtrak employee they can tell you where they are planning to board from and they’ll show you where you can wait around. At Penn Station you can sit with your family in a nice lounge and they’ll let you know when it’s time for you to board. Families with small children do get to board first with the first class travelers, which I never noticed until we had this trip. And it was nice because we could easily find seats together and get our luggage on board without the pressure of the rest of coach vying for seating. It was easy peasy and not the least bit stressful! On top of it, the kids loved loved loved the train!
From Penn Station we took the subway to Union Square where we checked into our AirBnB. We did pay a bit more to stay in an AirBnB in Midtown, but for us it was worth it. It was an interesting layout in that we had our own private two bedroom and living area. Our bathroom was technically private in that we were the only ones using it, but to access it it was in the hall next to another bathroom for the other private apartment. The kitchen was shared between the two private apartments. Again, weird layout and we had to spend maybe an extra $50 for the weekend versus getting a hotel room in a similar area. Why was it worth it to us? Because the kids had their own room! Nothing is worse than being stuck in a dark hotel room at 8pm willing your child to sleep while you are wide awake. You can’t have your phone on or the TV because that keeps your child up. So for us we always opt for a two bedroom AirBnB when we can.
After we settled into our AirBnB. We walked a block and a half to Milk Bar for a little treat. It was a bit chilly, but can two little kids ever say no to ice cream? The the Union Square location is small, but we managed to find a spot on the bench right outside of the shop.
From there, we took the kids back on the Subway to Time Square! Time Square, as always, is just packed with tourists taking in what is New York City. We opted not to take our stroller this trip because I knew it would just be too difficult to navigate the thing with all the people and having to also take the subway. Instead, we opted to use our Kelty Kids child carrier, which isn’t quite an intense hiking backpack but sturdy, comfortable, and small enough to carry a 3 year old around. Unfortunately they don’t sell it anymore. 🙁
In Time Square we mostly took in all the large buildings and bright lights. To the kids, this was incredibly amazing. And as a treat, I took them to M&M’s World. There are several floors of toys and M&M candies to choose from. It can get quite packed in there, mostly people trying to get out of the cold. My daughter and I went into one of their M&M themed photo booths and took some pictures as a little souvenir along with some M&M’s in a Statue of Liberty container.
After killing some time at M&M’s World, we had an early-ish dinner at City Kitchen, which is an indoor food market on 8th Ave and 44th St. There weren’t very many tourists here, and it offers a variety of food like burgers, Asian fare, and seafood. It may be hard to find seating there depending on how busy it gets, but because we decided to have an earlier dinner we didn’t have to wait long to find a table for our family. We found food to satisfy all our needs and we left full and happy before we caught the Subway home and called it a day.
