outdoors,  travel

A Day in NYC with Kids

July 2, 2025 /

I typically have our vacations pretty well planned out, but for this vacation, I had a list of possibilities and chose and adapted our schedule with visiting with my father in law and wake up time of the rest of the family. So while I really wanted to leave for NYC earlier, we didn’t get to the train station till 10 AM which put us in the city around 12:30 since we took the train from Port Jefferson and took a subway from Penn Station to Central Park.  In the past, I had a great fold out map of the city and I really wished I had it this time: train and subway were clearly marked, as well as tourist attractions which meant the city was easy to navigate.

While my phone GPS was great for traveling above ground, I did not fill as confident as in the past on the subway because I did not have a map in hand. We used Google and managed with the maps on the subway, but next time, I will see if I can find one of those small fold out maps. They folded to the size of a phone and were thick and durable. We originally planned to visit the Natural History Museum, but changed our minds and decided to have lunch in Central Park.

Central Park was clean (even though I saw a rat) and we walked 12 minutes to the Boat House Cafe for lunch. We would have eaten on the restaurant side if we had been without kids (with a great view of the lake/pond), but chose the inexpensive cafe side. Hamburgers, hot dogs and soup were our choices.

The boys have watched the Home Alone movies several times the past couple of years, so we decided to look for some of the sights that are in the movie. We found one of the tunnels in Central Park and then decided to walk to the Grand Plaza. We could have tried to sneak in, but decided to walk FAO Schwartz walking down 5th Ave.

That was fun! The buildings were really cool: the Louis Vuitton Building was pretty amazing, the churches were pretty and we took a little break in the Trump Towers and had ice cream there. We also stopped in the Lego Store and just enjoyed the sights.

We did shop at FAO Schwartz and figured out how to get to the Statue of Liberty. Since it was so late in the day, we took a boat tour and our dinner ended up being free snacks they served: empanadas and pretzels. Finding a subway from where our tour returned was not easy, but we eventually made it back to the train station! That is really where I wished I had planned the trip out better. I would love to return to the city, but maybe stay closer, so a whole day could be spent there.

I do want to take the boys back and spend more time in Central Park. One of the boys wanted to see the empire state building and there are definitely a number of places they would enjoy seeing.

A bientôt!

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