I liked the post about the Brooklyn Bridge trip. It also made me think of a question to you. Is it possible to make a walking trip, crossing Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, walk up to Manhattan Bridge (my map shows it’s only a few blocks) and come back to the Manhattan borough using Manhattan Bridge.

You can most definitely do this. In fact, when you are walking across the Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn you see a sign for the Manhattan Bridge walking path as well. Based on the map below I estimate the distance of the trip to be about 2.5 miles, assuming your starting point is at City Hall in Manhattan.

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To try and keep down the cost, we are considering staying outside of the main island and traveling in and I wondered what your thoughts of this are? Is it worth it to save decent money or should we just bite he bullet and make the most of our few days?

It really depends on what deals you are able to find within a decent proximity to the city. Some people stay over in Secaucus, NJ which is about fifteen minutes by bus to Manhattan with a little traffic. To the north of the city there is a Residence Inn by Marriott in White Plains that offers rooms with kitchens and is a couple of minutes walk from the Metro-North train into Grand Central Station. The ride is about thirty to forty minutes.

There are some other options in Queens as well if you stay at a hotel near La Guardia airport. The ambiance isn’t that great though and public transport from there is limited. The Best Western City View hotel in Long Island City might be a good option as well. It is close to Manhattan and is about half a mile from the Number 7 train into Manhattan. Take a look at Jersey City hotels as well. There is convenient access to lower Manhattan from there via the PATH train system.

I would advise that you shop around and see if the prices you find are considerably less that the deals available in Manhattan hotels. I would compare the outlying hotels with ones in Manhattan that are outside of the Midtown hot zone, especially avoiding from Times Square up to Central Park. Once you have a comparison that includes the lesser price hotels in Manhattan you can start to figure out if the travel time and cost will be worth it.

In general, I’d recommend staying someplace where you can catch a train into town, rather than relying on the buses. Bus service to outer areas can take a long time if there is traffic and might not run as frequently as the Metro-North or New York City subway trains.

We will also catch the start of the US Open Tennis and again wondered if you had any particular tips for getting tickets/visiting to see the stars in action.

The U.S. Open is a great sporting event. I’ve attended several times and always enjoy it. I believe that tickets for the event go on sale in May or June. You can typically buy them online via Ticketmaster. You can set up an alert on the Ticketmaster site to remind you of the on sale date. My advice is to know the date when tickets go on sale and be online and ready to buy at the time when the tickets go on sale. They do go fast! I remember that they have special early on-sale dates for American Express credit card holders. So keep an eye out for that if you happen to have one of those cards.

If you want to be able to relax and mingle with the players I recommend going for a day session early in the tournament. There are a lot of matches going on at that time. There are certainly a lot more players around. And during the day it’s easier to recognize the different tennis pros and personalities walking the grounds there.

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