City Sights is The Best Way to Tour NYC

Last month when my daughter and I visited NYC we knew we wanted to see all the traditional sights. With only three days there I knew it could get pretty expensive and confusing to navigate everything. We didn’t have a personal tour guide to take us through all the places on the map.

Fortunately I was able to get an NYC pass from Smart Destinations Explorer Pass that allowed us the see most of the major attractions during our three days.

The Empire State Building at Night

We went to the Empire State Building the first night (you can see our blurry pictures below) with the pass. All we had to do was show our pass and they gave us the tickets. It was a beautiful summer night with perfect temperatures. It was definitely windy up there though and man was it packed with people.

One of the attendants asked where we were from and when we told him that we were from Atlanta, he told us that Usher had been there earlier. I suppose that was his way to make a connection. Our male companion was convinced he was flirting, LOL! Probably so, but I appreciated his friendliness.

The next day we decided to really tour the city so we headed to the ticket office for the City Sights tour. We got our tickets and it was explained that we had 24 hours to use it.

The way it worked is we would board the tour bus that would take up through either uptown or mid/downtown Manhattan depending on which tour we wanted. We could hop on and hop off at different attractions. When we got off we could walk around and tour until our heart’s content then get back on anther bus at the designed bus stop.

Our Tour Destinations

The tour bus was uncovered so we were able to see everything from our seats on top. We took the mid/downtown tour with a bonus Brooklyn tour. Our bus took us all through midtown where we saw Macy’s, the Flat Iron building (were parts of Spiderman were filmed), through the fashion district, China town, and much more.

We also went through Brooklyn and downtown by Battery Park and the waterfront. I don’t think I would have every seen that much of NYC if we had tried to tour a different way.

Since it was mid summer it was very hot so we were glad to have water, sunglasses, and a breeze. Each bus had tour guides that talked about each section we were passing. Most were very knowledgeable and made the tour a very good experience. We used earphones we received when we boarded the bus to listen to the tour guide if we wanted to.

The Guides

We had three different guides for the day. The first was a young man who shared a lot of trivia, talked from a memorized script it seemed, but was well versed as well as multi-lingual.

Our second guide was more freestyle as we toured Brooklyn. She was energetic and such a trooper through the heat. She was also a compassionate person allowing stranded tourist to ride on our bus even though we were full.

Our last tour guide was boring and spoke in such a monotone voice we gave up trying to listen, much less understand her. She seemed ready to be done with it and basically kicked us off the bus at the last stop.

Wrapping Up the Tour

We spent about six hours on the tour in all but it was time well spent because of all we saw. I got some of my better photos of the city on the tour. My daughter and I both agreed that anyone visiting NYC should do the City Sights tour to get a well-rounded experience.