Leave
Fri, Jun 1
Total time: 13hr 45min
Depart
8:30 AM
Dubai , United Arab Emirates
Dubai International Airport (DXB) Terminal 3
Arrive
2:15 PM
New York, NY , United States
Kennedy Airport (JFK) Terminal 4
SAVE 15% Savings plus $100 Spa Voucher at check-in!
Selected room ($1,006.25 $855.31 per night) Price Assurance
Superior Suite - 1 king bed - Courtyard View 1BR/1BA Actual nightly rates
Cuisine ItalianHours Mon–Fri 11:30am–3pm; Sun–Wed 5–10pm; Thurs–Sat 5–11:30pm; Sat–Sun 11am–3pmLocation 3rd Floor, The Upper West SideTransportation Subway: A, B, C, D, 1 to 59th St./Columbus CircleReservations Reservations recommendedPhone 212/823-2523Web sitehttp://www.avocerestaurant.comPrices Pastas $19–$25; main courses $22–$38Credit Cards AE,DC,DISC,MC,V
A Voce Columbus Circle Review
The original A Voce off Madison Park has always been popular, but this one, which opened in 2009, in the Time Warner Center, with picture windows overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park, is even better and a grand experience on every level. The room is big, sparkling and convivial with to-die-for views, but take all that away and you still have the food. And if it were served in a coat check closet, I wouldn’t be complaining. The menu changes periodically, each new menu focusing on a different Italian region; when I visited, the emphasis was on Sicily and the south. The house-cured baccala with pine nuts and raisins was the perfect mix of salt and sweet and a wonderful first course. A pasta course is a must; I still dream about the cavatelli with Brussels sprouts, almonds, and whipped sheep’s milk ricotta. With Sicily in mind, I sampled the pesce spada, or swordfish, with fennel, olives, and a chickpea fritter that was cooked to moist perfection. A Voce makes their own gelato, sorbet, and granite (Italian ice), and either or all are irresistible as an accompaniment to any of the restaurant’s amazing desserts.
When chef/restaurateur Tom Valenti opened Ouest in 2001, it signaled a renaissance in the Upper West Side dining scene. With red banquettes and an intimate balcony area, Ouest is both cozy and clubby. Service is personable but also professional—so good you’ll need to keep reminding yourself that you are on the Upper West Side. But what really draws the crowds is Valenti’s mastery in the kitchen, especially with such meats as his signature braised lamb shank or his melt-in-your-mouth braised beef short ribs. The quality suffers not one iota when you switch to seafood. The sautéed skate is perfectly prepared, with a simple sauce of parsley and olive oil, while the baby calamari in a spicy tomato-sopressata sauce appetizer was so good I actually smiled as I ate it.
Suggested admission $16 adults, $12 seniors and students, $9 children 2–12; Space Show admission $24 adults, $18 seniors and students, $14 children 2–12. Additional charges for IMAX movies and some special exhibitions
Review of American Museum of Natural History
This is one of the hottest museum tickets in town, thanks to the Rose Center for Earth and Space, whose four-story-tall planetarium sphere hosts the show Journey to the Stars, narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, about the lives and deaths of stars. Prepare to be blown away by this astounding, literally earth-shaking short film.
Buy your tickets in advance for the Space Show in order to guarantee admission (they’re available online); I also recommend buying tickets in advance for a specific IMAX film or special exhibition, such as the Butterfly Conservatory (see below), especially during peak seasons (summer, autumn, holiday time) and for weekend visits; otherwise, you might miss out. Other must-sees include the Big Bang Theater, which re-creates the theoretical birth of the universe; the Hall of the Universe, with its very own 16-ton meteorite; and the terrific Hall of Planet Earth, which focuses on the geologic processes of our home planet (great volcano display!). All in all, you’ll need a minimum of 2 hours to fully explore the Rose Center.
The rest of the 4-square-block museum is nothing to sneeze at, either. Founded in 1869, it houses the world’s greatest natural-science collection in a group of buildings made of towers and turrets, pink granite, and red brick. The diversity of the holdings is astounding: some 36 million specimens, ranging from microscopic organisms to the world’s largest cut gem, the Brazilian Princess Topaz (21,005 carats). Rose Center aside, it would take you all day to see the entire museum, and then you still wouldn’t get to everything. If you don’t have a lot of time, you can see the best of the best on free highlights tours offered daily every hour at 15 minutes after the hour from 10:15am to 3:15pm. Free daily spotlight tours, thematic tours that change monthly, are also offered; stop by an information desk for the day’s schedule. High-tech audio tours that allow you to access narration in the order you choose are also available to help you make sense of it all.
If you only see one exhibit, see the dinosaurs, which take up the fourth floor.
The Hall of Biodiversity is an impressive multimedia exhibit, but its doom-and-gloom story about the future of rainforests and other natural habitats might be too much for the little ones. Kids 5 and up should head to the Discovery Room, with lots of hands-on exhibits and experiments. (Parents, be prepared: There seems to be a gift shop overflowing with stuffed animals at every turn.) The Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins traces the evolution of man and even offers children’s workshops where kids can compare skull casts of early humans.
The museum excels at special exhibitions, so check to see what will be on while you’re in town in case any advance planning is required. The magical Butterfly Conservatory, a walk-in enclosure housing nearly 500 free-flying tropical butterflies, has developed into a can’t-miss fixture from October through May; check to see if it’s in the house while you’re in town.
Observatory admission $20 adults, $18 seniors, $14 children 6–11, free for children 5 and under
Review of Empire State Building
It took 60,000 tons of steel, 10 million bricks, 2.5 million feet of electrical wire, 120 miles of pipe, and 7 million man-hours to build. King Kong climbed it in 1933—and again in 2005. A plane slammed into it in 1945. The World Trade Center superseded it in 1970 as the island’s tallest building. And in 1997, a gunman ascended it to stage a deadly shooting. On that horrific day of September 11, 2001, it once again regained its status as New York City’s tallest building, after 31 years of taking second place. And through it all, the Empire State Building has remained one of the city’s favorite landmarks and its signature high-rise. Completed in 1931, the limestone-and-stainless-steel Streamline Deco dazzler climbs 102 stories (1,454 ft.) and now harbors the offices of fashion firms, and, in its upper reaches, a jumble of high-tech broadcast equipment.
Always a conversation piece, the Empire State Building glows every night, bathed in colored floodlights to commemorate events of significance—red, white, and blue for Independence Day; green for St. Patrick’s Day; red, black, and green for Martin Luther King Day; blue and white for Hanukkah; even blue and white for the Yankees' World Series victory in 2009 (you can find a complete lighting schedule online). The familiar silver spire can be seen from all over the city.
The best views, and what keeps the nearly three million visitors coming every year, are the ones from the 86th- and 102nd-floor observatories. The lower one is best—you can walk out on a windy deck and look through coin-operated viewers (bring quarters!) over what, on a clear day, can be as much as an 80-mile visible radius. The citywide panorama is magnificent. One surprise is the flurry of rooftop activity, an aspect of city life that thrives unnoticed from our everyday sidewalk vantage point. The higher observation deck is glass-enclosed and cramped.
Light fog can create an admirably moody effect, but it goes without saying that a clear day is best. Dusk brings the most remarkable views and the biggest crowds. Consider going in the morning, when the light is still low on the horizon, keeping glare to a minimum. Starry nights are pure magic.
In your haste to go up, don’t rush through the three-story-high marble lobby without pausing to admire its features, which include a wonderful Streamline mural. Empire State Building Ticket Buying -- Lines can be horrible at the concourse-level ticket booth, so be prepared to wait—or consider purchasing advance tickets online using a credit card at www.esbnyc.com. Tickets to the ESB are also included in your CityPass. You’ll pay slightly more—tickets were priced $2 higher on the website at press time—but it’s well worth it, especially if you’re visiting during busy seasons, when the line can be hours long. You’re not required to choose a time or date for your tickets in advance; they can be used on any regular open day. Print them out at home and proceed directly to the turnstiles—past everyone who didn’t plan as well as you did!
Now you can call in advance to get an estimate of your wait in line, along with a report on the visibility from the observatory. Dial tel.877/692-8439 for the service.
Admission $12 adults, $9 seniors, $7 children 3–12, free for children 2 and under
Review of Central Park Zoo/Tisch Children's Zoo
Here is a pleasant refuge within a refuge, where lithe sea lions frolic in the central pool area with beguiling style, gigantic but graceful polar bears glide back and forth across a watery pool that has glass walls through which you can observe very large paws doing very smooth strokes, monkeys seem to regard those on the other side of the fence with knowing disdain, and in the hot and humid Tropic Zone, large colorful birds swoop around in freedom, sometimes landing next to nonplused visitors.
Because of its small size, the zoo is at its best with its displays of smaller animals. The indoor multilevel Tropic Zone is a real highlight, its steamy rainforest home to everything from black-and-white colobus monkeys to Emerald tree boa constrictors to a leaf-cutter ant farm; look for the new dart-poison-frog exhibit, which is very cool. So is the large penguin enclosure in the Polar Circle, which is better than the one at San Diego’s SeaWorld. In the Temperate Territory, look for the Asian red pandas (cousins to the big black-and-white ones), which look like the world’s most beautiful raccoons. Despite their pool and piles of ice, however, the polar bears still look sad.
The zoo is good for short attention spans; you can cover the entire thing in 1 1/2 to 3 hours, depending on the size of the crowds and how long you like to linger. It’s also very kid-friendly, with lots of well-written and -illustrated placards that older kids can understand. For the littlest ones, there’s the $6-million Tisch Children’s Zoo. With goats, llamas, potbellied pigs, and more, this petting zoo and playground is a real blast for the 5-and-under set.
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Location in the World-
New york is a state in the United States. It is in the northern hemisphere and borders Canada.
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Airfare-Leave
Fri, Jun 1
Total time: 13hr 45min
Depart
8:30 AM
Dubai , United Arab Emirates
Dubai International Airport (DXB) Terminal 3
Arrive
2:15 PM
New York, NY , United States
Kennedy Airport (JFK) Terminal 4
Emirates 201
- First
- Airbus A380
- 6,846 mi
- 13hr 45min
- Meal: Complimentary food and drinks
Seat mapBaggage fees are NOT charged at booking.
Your current trip cost
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The Carlyle - A Rosewood Hotel
SAVE 15% Savings plus $100 Spa Voucher at check-in!Selected room
($1,006.25 $855.31 per night)
Price Assurance
Superior Suite - 1 king bed - Courtyard View 1BR/1BA
Actual nightly rates
Your current trip cost
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Voce Columbus Circle-
Cuisine Italian
A Voce Columbus Circle Review
The original A Voce off Madison Park has always been popular, but this one, which opened in 2009, in the Time Warner Center, with picture windows overlooking Columbus Circle and Central Park, is even better and a grand experience on every level. The room is big, sparkling and convivial with to-die-for views, but take all that away and you still have the food. And if it were served in a coat check closet, I wouldn’t be complaining. The menu changes periodically, each new menu focusing on a different Italian region; when I visited, the emphasis was on Sicily and the south. The house-cured baccala with pine nuts and raisins was the perfect mix of salt and sweet and a wonderful first course. A pasta course is a must; I still dream about the cavatelli with Brussels sprouts, almonds, and whipped sheep’s milk ricotta. With Sicily in mind, I sampled the pesce spada, or swordfish, with fennel, olives, and a chickpea fritter that was cooked to moist perfection. A Voce makes their own gelato, sorbet, and granite (Italian ice), and either or all are irresistible as an accompaniment to any of the restaurant’s amazing desserts.
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Ouest
Ouest Review
When chef/restaurateur Tom Valenti opened Ouest in 2001, it signaled a renaissance in the Upper West Side dining scene. With red banquettes and an intimate balcony area, Ouest is both cozy and clubby. Service is personable but also professional—so good you’ll need to keep reminding yourself that you are on the Upper West Side. But what really draws the crowds is Valenti’s mastery in the kitchen, especially with such meats as his signature braised lamb shank or his melt-in-your-mouth braised beef short ribs. The quality suffers not one iota when you switch to seafood. The sautéed skate is perfectly prepared, with a simple sauce of parsley and olive oil, while the baby calamari in a spicy tomato-sopressata sauce appetizer was so good I actually smiled as I ate it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
American Museum of Natural History
200 Central Park West, New York City, New York 10024Review of American Museum of Natural History
This is one of the hottest museum tickets in town, thanks to the Rose Center for Earth and Space, whose four-story-tall planetarium sphere hosts the show Journey to the Stars, narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, about the lives and deaths of stars. Prepare to be blown away by this astounding, literally earth-shaking short film.
Buy your tickets in advance for the Space Show in order to guarantee admission (they’re available online); I also recommend buying tickets in advance for a specific IMAX film or special exhibition, such as the Butterfly Conservatory (see below), especially during peak seasons (summer, autumn, holiday time) and for weekend visits; otherwise, you might miss out. Other must-sees include the Big Bang Theater, which re-creates the theoretical birth of the universe; the Hall of the Universe, with its very own 16-ton meteorite; and the terrific Hall of Planet Earth, which focuses on the geologic processes of our home planet (great volcano display!). All in all, you’ll need a minimum of 2 hours to fully explore the Rose Center.
The rest of the 4-square-block museum is nothing to sneeze at, either. Founded in 1869, it houses the world’s greatest natural-science collection in a group of buildings made of towers and turrets, pink granite, and red brick. The diversity of the holdings is astounding: some 36 million specimens, ranging from microscopic organisms to the world’s largest cut gem, the Brazilian Princess Topaz (21,005 carats). Rose Center aside, it would take you all day to see the entire museum, and then you still wouldn’t get to everything. If you don’t have a lot of time, you can see the best of the best on free highlights tours offered daily every hour at 15 minutes after the hour from 10:15am to 3:15pm. Free daily spotlight tours, thematic tours that change monthly, are also offered; stop by an information desk for the day’s schedule. High-tech audio tours that allow you to access narration in the order you choose are also available to help you make sense of it all.
If you only see one exhibit, see the dinosaurs, which take up the fourth floor.
The Hall of Biodiversity is an impressive multimedia exhibit, but its doom-and-gloom story about the future of rainforests and other natural habitats might be too much for the little ones. Kids 5 and up should head to the Discovery Room, with lots of hands-on exhibits and experiments. (Parents, be prepared: There seems to be a gift shop overflowing with stuffed animals at every turn.) The Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins traces the evolution of man and even offers children’s workshops where kids can compare skull casts of early humans.
The museum excels at special exhibitions, so check to see what will be on while you’re in town in case any advance planning is required. The magical Butterfly Conservatory, a walk-in enclosure housing nearly 500 free-flying tropical butterflies, has developed into a can’t-miss fixture from October through May; check to see if it’s in the house while you’re in town.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Empire State Building
350 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10118Review of Empire State Building
It took 60,000 tons of steel, 10 million bricks, 2.5 million feet of electrical wire, 120 miles of pipe, and 7 million man-hours to build. King Kong climbed it in 1933—and again in 2005. A plane slammed into it in 1945. The World Trade Center superseded it in 1970 as the island’s tallest building. And in 1997, a gunman ascended it to stage a deadly shooting. On that horrific day of September 11, 2001, it once again regained its status as New York City’s tallest building, after 31 years of taking second place. And through it all, the Empire State Building has remained one of the city’s favorite landmarks and its signature high-rise. Completed in 1931, the limestone-and-stainless-steel Streamline Deco dazzler climbs 102 stories (1,454 ft.) and now harbors the offices of fashion firms, and, in its upper reaches, a jumble of high-tech broadcast equipment.
Always a conversation piece, the Empire State Building glows every night, bathed in colored floodlights to commemorate events of significance—red, white, and blue for Independence Day; green for St. Patrick’s Day; red, black, and green for Martin Luther King Day; blue and white for Hanukkah; even blue and white for the Yankees' World Series victory in 2009 (you can find a complete lighting schedule online). The familiar silver spire can be seen from all over the city.
The best views, and what keeps the nearly three million visitors coming every year, are the ones from the 86th- and 102nd-floor observatories. The lower one is best—you can walk out on a windy deck and look through coin-operated viewers (bring quarters!) over what, on a clear day, can be as much as an 80-mile visible radius. The citywide panorama is magnificent. One surprise is the flurry of rooftop activity, an aspect of city life that thrives unnoticed from our everyday sidewalk vantage point. The higher observation deck is glass-enclosed and cramped.
Light fog can create an admirably moody effect, but it goes without saying that a clear day is best. Dusk brings the most remarkable views and the biggest crowds. Consider going in the morning, when the light is still low on the horizon, keeping glare to a minimum. Starry nights are pure magic.
In your haste to go up, don’t rush through the three-story-high marble lobby without pausing to admire its features, which include a wonderful Streamline mural.
Empire State Building Ticket Buying -- Lines can be horrible at the concourse-level ticket booth, so be prepared to wait—or consider purchasing advance tickets online using a credit card at www.esbnyc.com. Tickets to the ESB are also included in your CityPass. You’ll pay slightly more—tickets were priced $2 higher on the website at press time—but it’s well worth it, especially if you’re visiting during busy seasons, when the line can be hours long. You’re not required to choose a time or date for your tickets in advance; they can be used on any regular open day. Print them out at home and proceed directly to the turnstiles—past everyone who didn’t plan as well as you did!
Now you can call in advance to get an estimate of your wait in line, along with a report on the visibility from the observatory. Dial tel.877/692-8439 for the service.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Central Park Zoo/Tisch Children's Zoo
Review of Central Park Zoo/Tisch Children's Zoo
Here is a pleasant refuge within a refuge, where lithe sea lions frolic in the central pool area with beguiling style, gigantic but graceful polar bears glide back and forth across a watery pool that has glass walls through which you can observe very large paws doing very smooth strokes, monkeys seem to regard those on the other side of the fence with knowing disdain, and in the hot and humid Tropic Zone, large colorful birds swoop around in freedom, sometimes landing next to nonplused visitors.
Because of its small size, the zoo is at its best with its displays of smaller animals. The indoor multilevel Tropic Zone is a real highlight, its steamy rainforest home to everything from black-and-white colobus monkeys to Emerald tree boa constrictors to a leaf-cutter ant farm; look for the new dart-poison-frog exhibit, which is very cool. So is the large penguin enclosure in the Polar Circle, which is better than the one at San Diego’s SeaWorld. In the Temperate Territory, look for the Asian red pandas (cousins to the big black-and-white ones), which look like the world’s most beautiful raccoons. Despite their pool and piles of ice, however, the polar bears still look sad.
The zoo is good for short attention spans; you can cover the entire thing in 1 1/2 to 3 hours, depending on the size of the crowds and how long you like to linger. It’s also very kid-friendly, with lots of well-written and -illustrated placards that older kids can understand. For the littlest ones, there’s the $6-million Tisch Children’s Zoo. With goats, llamas, potbellied pigs, and more, this petting zoo and playground is a real blast for the 5-and-under set.
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Currency-
The currency in New York is the American dollar.
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Duration
We are staying in New York for 10 days and 10 nights.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Climate-(22)
(24)
(30)
(36)
(37)
(38)
(41)
(40)
(39)
(34)
(29)
(24)
(41)
(3.9)
(5.8)
(10.3)
(16.7)
(22.0)
(26.7)
(29.4)
(28.6)
(24.4)
(18.1)
(12.6)
(6.6)
(17.08)
(−2.8)
(−1.7)
(1.8)
(7.1)
(12.2)
(17.6)
(20.5)
(19.9)
(16.0)
(10.0)
(5.3)
(0.0)
(8.82)
(−21)
(−26)
(−15)
(−11)
(0)
(7)
(11)
(10)
(4)
(−2)
(−11)
(−25)
(−26)
(92.7)
(78.5)
(110.7)
(114)
(106.4)
(112)
(116.8)
(112.8)
(108.7)
(111.8)
(102.1)
(101.6)
(1,268.2)
(20.3)
(23.9)
(9.4)
(1.5)
(0)
(0)
(0)
(0)
(0)
(0)
(0.8)
(12.2)
(68.1)
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The total amount spent was about $29,300.