NYC Bus Tour & City Pass

Hi there! I'm so excited to dive into the details of our trip to New York City with you. I've touched on it before, but this trip is so, so near and dear to my heart. It will always be remembered as the one that started it all! This trip is where I learned I could see the world! I could go anywhere my heart desired! I could make my dreams come true! It was so special to me to get to share this trip with my mom. It was a long one and there were some pits along the way, but at the end of it all, it was amazing! We talk about it often, and most definitely long to go back. But for now, I get to revisit The City by sharing our time there with you! I want to start out with sharing our experience with bus tours and city passes. Our entire trip was based around them, so they sort of set the style of our trip. We chose NYC Sightseeing Tours for our bus tour, and The New York Pass for a pass around the city.

The bus tour we chose had multiple loops to choose from, a gazillion stops at all the places we wanted to see, and great package deals for the time we were there. This was hop-on/hop-off style, so if we wanted off at one stop, another bus would be shortly behind that we could catch to the next stop. We nixed taxi & subway rides, so this was our main means of transportation, besides our own two feet, allowing us to save money on taxi fares. The New York Pass was a great deal for us since we were in the city for 7 days. We definitely got more bang for our buck by doing this. With our pass we: went to the Empire State Building, Top of the Rock, NBC Studio Tour, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, 9/11 Memorial, and more! To determine whether this was economical for us, we made a list of the places we wanted to go to, found the entrance prices, and added them up. Obviously, it was the right choice for us. Along with all of the entrance fees, we received discounts on shopping and restaurants. It also comes with this fun, handy dandy notebook that lists details and information on each attraction offered.

It turned out these two companies offered a package deal for the city pass and bus passes, so we took advantage! Anything to save a few dollars so we could spend it shopping was a must! :) A bonus was most of the attractions were stops on the bus tour, so it was easy in and out. We really enjoyed the bus tours, even in times of traffic. We even braved the snowy cold one day at sat up top to take in all the sights (mom was not a happy camper about this, turned out she was right to be... it was freezing!)! But we managed, and laugh about it now. I suppose it was worth it to be able to catch views and photos of so many great places. So I know you want to get in on the photos, so I'll hop to it. These are just a few of the popular places we saw on our bus tour and went to with out city pass.

 Atop the bus on a super snowy day.

 Cathedral of St. John the Divine

One of THE most beautiful places I have ever seen!

 Ellis Island & the Statue of Liberty

We could have toured both with our passes, but we did not want to brave the choppy waters.

 The Flat Iron Building

 Grand Central Station

 Brownstones in Harlem

 At NBC Studios

We did a tour of the studio, including seeing the set of Saturday Night Live.

(no photos were allowed in the studio)

 NYC Library

 Radio City Music Hall

The pass offers a behind the scenes tour of the hall that we are kicking ourselves for missing.

 Rockefeller Plaza

The bus tour offered a night time, city lights (holiday lights for the time we were there) tour.

 Egyptian artifacts at The Met.

 Van Gogh's Starry Night at the MoMA

 Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan

Yankee Stadium in the Bronx

We tried to catch all of the bus tour loops, but we didn't have time for the Brooklyn loop. We still saw TONSSSS of places and enjoyed all of the history and knowledge we learned along the way. It may be a super touristy thing to do, but it really worked out well for us. Having the attractions as stops on the bus tour was the icing on the cake! Hope you enjoyed touring NYC with me. I'll be back soon for some museum fun!

If you are interested in more information on New York City you can contact me here to book your own Big Apple vacation!