The Metropolitan Art Museum is simply amazing.

Things you have only seen in books, are right there in front of you. My 2 most memorable were Washington Crossing the Delaware and the Jackson Pollock, which is truly amazing to see in person. There is even a Frank Lloyd Wright installment inside the museum. It had a pretty good restaurant too.

And a NYC slice of pizza and a coke. At any of the many original Rays!

Look into the metropolitan museum of art and the natural history museum including the planetarium show. The Bronx zoo is one of the very best. The holiday spectacular at radio city is wonderful if you will be there before the holidays are over, and even if not, the studio tour is lots of fun. The circle line boat tour is fun if the weather is nice.

If you are there during the holidays, the dept store windows on 5th ave are a must see as is the tree at Rockefeller center and we always took a spin by St. Pats cathedral. For kids FAO Schwarz and the Disney stores are must see.

When are you going? Have you been there before?

For a 9yo, I would choose Matilda and Blue Man Group. My youngest is now 10, and over the years my three kids have been to many on your list (we're local). I think those two would be best.

As far as things not yet mentioned, maybe a tram ride to and from Roosevelt Island.

Timeout is a great web site. It has a calendar at the top of events in New York. If you're there on a holiday it also lists what's opened or closed. They refer to it as the ultimate guide to New York, with info on restaurants, theater, shopping etc. - all the good stuff.

Here is a link that might be useful: Timeout New York

I am very appreciative of the advice. More suggestions please!

I've also found several good nyc threads here. Our dates arent completely locked down yet. Sometime between thanksgiving and mid january. I'll have a better idea in a week or so. Depends on dh work.

I have been to nyc once, but with a group of grad students. Dh and daughter have not.

The Museum of the City of New York was my kids' favorite. They have a wonderful collection of toys that used to be on permanent exhibit. The Natural History Museum is fantastic for kids as well. My children got bored pretty quickly looking at rooms ful of paintings but they liked the Temple of Dendur and tolerated the sculpture exhibits at the Metropolitan in small doses. To be completely truthful, they liked the Christmas tree at the Met with all those renaissance looking angels better than the art. And the gift shop, of course :-)

I would not recommend Matilda unless she really loves the book (or movie). Its not a great production and the music is completely, utterly forgettable. I would recommend Newsies for the unbelievable dancing and the Nutcracker. There's a Pippin revival that's gotten good reviews; I am seeing it on the recommendation of DS2 who has already seen it and insists we go when I visit next week. We're the only people I know who actually disliked The Lion King. Everyone seems to have loved it, so I am clearly not a good judge of its appeal.)

Since you are going to be there so long, you might be interested in The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. As architecture it is wildly interesting, and they have a really interesting roster of events going on all the time. If there is ANY chance you'll be there Dec. 19 you should try to attend the winter solstice celebration.

Def make the tram trip to Roosevelt Island as Mtnrdredux suggests! It's a different world over there. My kids played on Little league teams there and we loved the small town feel of the place.

As far as museums and kids, the last time we went to the Moma they had some great ideas for kids touring the museum.

For example, as we entered a gallery, each kid took a turn deciding what they were interested in. First, from afar, we took turns guessing the title of the work. Then we'd look, and listen to the recording. It made the visit a lot of fun for them , since they chose what interested them. (PS the Moma has a really yummy little restaurant right near Warhol's soup cans)

As far as Matilda, my kids thought it was very funny, and they liked a lot of the dance numbers (like the one on the enormous swings). I hate to contradict the lovely KSWL but my 9 and 10 yo DD loved Matilda. : )

I am the first to admit I am overly critical of shows, mtn---maybe jaded. This year I have seen (or after next week) will have seen twelve Broadway productions, although one of them I saw twice. I went to Book of Mormon twice in six weeks just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating when I disliked it so much the first time! (I wasn't.) We have a son in this business and I have a loooong list of forgettable shows. BOM wasn't forgettable, but icky, and the music just does not stand on its own. I admit to being a Gilbert and Sullivan addict, and if the OP's daughter loves Pirates of Penzance I think she will be disappointed with the music in Matilda.

But it will all depend on what tickets they can get. We've seen our share of less than stellar shows just for the magic of sitting in a Broadway theater...

A friend of mine says that City Bakery has THE best hot chocolate!

I've given a ton of NYC visit advice on these boards already--but Johnny T does it WAY funnier than I can! Your daughter will love this.

Here is a link that might be useful: Johnny T's New York Tips

You could get up early and stand in line for hours in Soho for cronuts.

My daughter lived in Manhattan and now Brooklyn so we've been to NYC multiple times. Have you considered seeing Wicked? It's a re-imagining of the Wizard of Oz. The music is so good. We've seen it twice and I'd see it again in a heartbeat. If you do this, watch the Wizard of Oz together beforehand. There's a good lesson to be learned from Wicked also.
http://www.wheaton.edu/CACE/CACE-Print-Resources/~/media/Files/Centers-and-Institutes/CACE/articles/Wicked.pdf

Central Park is a nice area to walk around.

Battery Park in lower Manhattan and then a walk to see the Wall Street (or Bowling Green) bull. Then also the 9/11 memorial.

Times Square at night.
Rockefeller Center and the stores/shops around the NBC building. If you go for the ice skating rink be prepared for long lines.

Staten Island Ferry. It's nothing fancy but gives a different perspective of the Hudson, feel the breeze and helps you get your bearings.

I'm not sure when you're going. We've been there during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in literal shoulder to shoulder crowd in the subway and on the streets which was a total waste as kids were propped up on adult shoulders to see the balloons; however the more fascinating part was walking the street afterwards when the crowds scattered and watching the crews deflate the balloons.

I'm leaving NYC later today after having seen four more plays. I can wholeheartedly recommend Bg Fish as a very family friendly show. Two of the three principals are excellent and the third is good. The music is mostly good, and there are lots of secondary characters who are very engaging. The story is interesting and there are some big splashy production numbers that are very old school Broadway ( like a stage of 40's costumed tap dancers in red white and blue).

The current iteration of Pippin is also a good choice for your DD. They've used acrobats and circus performers to good advantage and visually it's very stimulating. The music is okay, the play is old enough the you might even know some of the songs.

Couldn't recommend either Kinky Boots or Once, either for content or quality, sad to say. Fwiw I think the choreographer of Once should be banned from the profession forever, it was the dumbest, most pointless choreography that did nothing but detract from play.

NYC for a 9 year old:

1) Mary Poppins, Newsies or Lion King - all big production number type shows and very, very good. Les Mis is more sophisticated and also fabulous.

2) Ellen's Stardust diner (after or before the show as is it is nearby). Waiters and waitresses sing to you while you eat. Only order breakfast foods, as that is what they are good at. It is more about the place and less about the food there. My kids LOVE it.

3) MOMA -definitely

4) Natural History Museum is great

5) You have to go to the NYC Public Library. Go in, walk around, and make sure you go to the top floor. Many movies have been filmed there; it is a gorgeous building with great murals, art and history. Of course, take a picture of her with the lions out front.

6) 2nd Ave Deli for a good traditional Jewish NY deli.

7) Tenement Museum is a really nice historical exhibit and I recommend it highly.

Have fun! Walk around Central Park and have a great time!

Thank you so much for the input! I am hip deep in little scribbled notes on what to do and where to go. We are going in two weeks and will stay 7 days and possibly extend for 4 more, if hub's work schedule will permit. We will be there through thanksgiving -

So excited! My daughter is over-the-moon excited about it!

if you think you'll be there over Thanksgiving, make a dinner reservation NOW. Places will already be booked.

You could head to Bryant Park if you like little boutique shopping for xmas ideas...the park is full of vendor stands with all kinds of stuff.

I assume too you've already heard about going to see the parade balloons blown up the night before?

There's a Groupon for Radio City Christmas Show:
http://www.groupon.com/deals/gl-radio-city-christmas-spectacular-starring-the-rockettes-36
Groupon generally has coupons for some of the bus tours of NYC. I've never taken one but they might be worth looking into if it gets really cold while you're here. It's generally chilly but great walking weather in November.

Time Out as mentioned earlier is a great resource. There's always a lot of free things going on - noontime organ concert at churches, things like that.

A couple of other places: Grand Central is a beautiful building and definitely worth seeing; make sure you look UP! Also if the weather is good, walk the High Line and have hot chocolate or lunch at Chelsea Markets.

Max Brenner (a chocolate heaven) is great for a late breakfast or lunch. Depending when you're here, you might want to make reservations on open table: http://www.opentable.com/max-brenner-union-square

If you're here after Thanksgiving, the outdoor Holiday Mart at Union Square will be open.

As someone mentioned, the Main Library at 42nd Street is wonderful and right next to it is Bryant Park which has an ice-skating rink; it's free but the skate rental is $15.
http://bryantpark.org/things-to-do/wintervillage.html

Full disclosure - there was a shooting last night at Bryant Park. It would not stop me from going there.

New Victory Theater - http://www.newvictory.org/Home.aspx
Really good kids theater productions for reasonable prices and it's located on 42nd Street

Enjoy your visit.

Jane - I want to hangout with Johnny T and get some pizza!

I have always loved just walking the streets in the different neighborhoods-- love the different characters and flavors. Speaking of flavors, I have done a number of Savory Sojourn walking tours. It's Addie Tomei's (Marisa's mother) business and she leads all the tours I've been on. She's just a delightful, enthusiastic woman with incredible knowledge of the city-- she provides history of the neighborhoods in a very accessible way as well as fun back stories. Surely the tours have a food focus but they are enhanced by the stories of characters and the architecture and history. You'll taste goodies from little local cheese shops, bakeries and possibly see cheese or pasta or such being made. To close the tour, you'll share a meal at a small, lovely restaurant and talk about the day. I've enjoyed them repeatedly and while not something all young kids would enjoy, it's a tour that at least 1/2 of my nieces and nephews would have loved! I do think there's a minimum number for a custom tour but I just checked and they have a preplanned tour of Soho and Little Italy on the 24th that is open to the public. I customized this tour for my own group once-- we started at Balthazar with pastries, coffee and hot chocolate and then headed off on the 5 hr walking tour. The tour price ($165pp) includes all meals and tastings..

Again, it may not be something your family would enjoy-- but if so, I highly recommend. I have taken a number of friends on the public tours and customized tours for my own groups. We've always had a blast!

Another thought is Serendipity. I haven't been but my nieces who have been to NYC LOVE their frozen hot chocolate.

I echo many of the suggestions above and didnt feel the need to call them out again-- hope you don't mind that I went off in a slightly more specialized direction.

You guys are wonderful! I promise to post soon what our plans are! Still reading and researching.

I did not realize i would need to make dinner reservations so soon! Is thanksgiving dinner the only meal i need to reserve? We thought about chinatown for dinner. Ill do my traditional thanksgiving dinner when i get back.

Any suggestions for thanksgiving? We like most things except hubby doesnt like most seafood. We love ethnic foods, hoping to find restaurants that we cant find at home. Here, we like the north african, ethiopian, indian, chinese, japanese, kenyan and even a filipino restaurant. Our thai here is terrible. We have several really good italian places at home.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you for all the detailed suggestions! You guys are such a wonderful resource!

I had to laugh at the comment "make dinner reservations NOW". Our family typically travels somewhere for Thanksgiving. One year we went to Boston where our son was going to school. We did not make any dinner reservations for Thanksgiving Day so when it came time for noon meal there was nothing open except Rite Aid pharmacy. We ended up getting bread, sandwich meats, chips, etc and then played board games during the afternoon. Fortunately we found a terrific seafood restaurant for our evening meal which tasted all the better since we'd had a lite lunch. But our Rite Aid Thanksgiving Dinner is one of our fondest memories. Relaxing and fun.

If you like French cuisine, there is a small restaurant in the Times Square area that I like--- have been there several times this year and everything has been good. They have a good weekend brunch (or at least they have in the past). It is a charming, quiet place that is surprisingly inexpensive, and by that I mean that two diners can have an entree and appetizer and a glass of wine for around $65. It's called Saju Bistro, and it is on W 44th near 6th Ave. I believe they are open Thanksgiving if you don't find any other restaurants you like better, but you should probably make a reservation today---- you're going at the busiest time of year.

you should always call the restaurant directly instead of going through Open Table, which might not

Take a walk on the Highline!
I would make reservations as soon as possible for Thanksgiving.

This was just posted on a blog I subscribe to - NYC is the top destination for Thanksgiving. You might want to read this.

Here is a link that might be useful: NYC

We are leaving tomorrow, and are very excited ! I just want to thank you all again for the suggestions, and all the knowledge you shared! I have pored over your advice and incorporated most of it into our plans! I'll report back. Thank you again, and hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving holiday! K

I hope you have a fantastic trip. NYC is such a great place and I'm so thankful that it's just a short train ride for me. I'll be making my annual holiday visit shortly after Thanksgiving.

Can't wait to hear your report. Enjoy.

Maire

We're home and I just want to start by saying how much I appreciate everyone's advice, I and my family really benefitted from it and I hope others will find this thread as a resource!

We drove to NJ and parked at a new, lighted, guarded garage in Weehawken. It was brightly lit and very close to the ferry. We took the port imperial ferry to midtown/west 39th street at 4:30 pm and were fortunate enough to have a gorgeous sunset during our ferry ride.

We stayed at the Affinia Shelburne which is a couple of blocks away from Grand Central Station. It was convenient, nicely appointed, clean, quiet, the staff was pleasant and the beds were comfortable. The room was small, but had a kitchenette that we actually never used. I found the Affinia through a past gardenweb thread.

This post was edited by kiki_thinking on Wed, Dec 4, 13 at 16:07

What did we see? Grand central station architecture*, learned to use the subway, hiked battery park, rode the Staten Island ferry, Wall Street, 3rd floor of the stock exchange, the bull, trinity episcopal service on Wall Street, 9-11 memorial, freedom tower, tram to Roosevelt island, serendipity for frozen hot chocolate, rockette's Christmas spectacular (used groupon, thank ou!), walked the length of 5th avenue looking at all the spectacular Christmas windows, ao Schwartz, Lego store, American girl doll store, Empire State Building (20 degrees on street, negative 4 degrees at top with wind that would knock you down!

...toys R us, Times Square, we rented bikes and cycled around Central Park for a day.. Central Park zoo, carousel, playgrounds, statues.. Watched them blow up the balloons for Macy's parade, but skipped the parade itself and went to Chinatown ( had thanksgiving dinner there). little Italy, Greenwich village, walked across the Brooklyn bridge, American museum of natural history with planetarium/gems&minerals, asteroids, the Morgan library, Ellen's Stardust Diner where the waitstaff sing to you, Bryant park ice skating
And my two favorite things, the NYC public library and the play Wicked.

Ate a slice at Ray's, saw Rockefeller center and tree (but not lit), I'm sure we did more, I just am brain fogged with sleepiness!

We ate from street vendors, or wherever our nose led us. Had very nice dinners everywhere: Chinese, Thai, Indian, Persian, Italian.. Found a wonderful Japanese restaurant that was very inexpensive on 56th street between 5th and 6th avenue, beside the bicycle rental place that was so good we ate there twice. We walked 41 miles in the first 5 days after which we lost count, and I still managed to gain 6 pounds while I was there : /

The things my daughter enjoyed the most were: hailing taxis, hearing all the different languages, pretzel vendors, Wicked, and seeing New York City from high places (the roof of our hotel, tram, Empire State bldg).

We enjoyed it sooo much!
Thank you all again for all your suggestions. If we missed something this time, it is still on our list for the next trip!

-k

Wow! You crammed a lot in your visit and even did stuff we've never done though DH grew up there. Thx for the lovely pics and the follow up. So glad you had such a great time in the big apple.

Sounds wonderful. Thanks for the trip report.

What a great trip-- glad you had the time (and weather) to do so much! I will be going up around the holidays-- not yet sure if I'll spend the night. It all depends on what we decide to do .. and the weather. I've stayed at the Surrey on the upper east side the last few times I've been up-- it's been many years since I stayed midtown. Would love to hear what other restaurants you enjoyed-- especially thai, persian, indian.

Wow- what a busy but memorable trip. Beautiful pictures. I'm so glad you went to see Wicked! It's spectacular! Fun to listen to the music online.

Thank you for the advice hilltop, and the link to the wicked article. I started helping my daughter make the materials for a gingerbread house competition today, and my hands were really green while making the greenery mix of melted marshmallows, cornflakes and green foodcoloring. So naturally while making gingerbread pieces, we listened to and sang "what is this feeling". I sang elphaba's part. She did galinda's part. We decided that we need tshirts that say respectively: "Unusually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether almost impossible to describe" and "Blonde" : )

And here is a photo of the origami christmas tree at the american museum of nat'l history. So cute!

This post was edited by kiki_thinking on Thu, Dec 5, 13 at 11:34

Funkyart, it was raining and freezing part of the time, but we had our glee to keep us warm, : ) I will figure out the restaurant names etc and get back to you. We havent unpacked the car yet.
The tour suggested sounded wonderful, but we decided to save that for another trip.
Hope you have a great time!

Thanks for posting about your trip - I am impressed with all you managed to do and see! No wonder you're exhausted. And thanks for posting photos - they came out great.

My daughter enjoyed seeing the contorted pre parade balloons very much. And also enjoyed stopping and listening to and giving a dollar to everyone who was busking.

Thanks, Kiki.. no rush. I didnt realize you'd not even unpacked yet! I won't go for a few weeks. Not yet sure if we'll go before Christmas or after.. but we're very much looking forward to trying some new things. I'd love to do another food tour but we'll wait for another trip too. We'll definitely do the met or MOMA and perhaps a play... this is definitely a loose trip for us. I'd be happy with just walking around, shopping and eating. LOVE the city at the holidays.