Elaine Hopkins When cruises, theme parks and resorts begin to carry that "been- there-done-that" feeling, a city vacation in Chicago or New York City offers the new, the cutting edge, the unexpected, the vacation that refreshes. Even if you're on a budget.
Chicago and New York City are similar in many ways. Each has its unique advantages, which can be savored for a weekend or longer.
For Peorians, Chicago is closer and easy to navigate with a car, especially if you avoid rush-hour traffic. It's the more tourist- friendly of the two cities, walkable in good weather, with short taxi rides to most destinations.
New York is Chicago writ large: more vibrant, more crowded, more theater, more museums, more historic sites.
But forget the car. New York can be managed with a subway/bus pass and map, available at any station for less than the price of the obligatory taxi ride from the airport.
Finding a bed
Chicago has www.hotrooms.com, a Web site where excellent downtown and suburban hotels are available at discounted rates. Its toll- free number is (800) 468-3500.
From the Web site, you can print out a map to the hotel, which usually has parking rates also listed. If you pick your dates carefully, plan to spend less than $150 a night for hotel and parking in Chicago, or less if you get lucky.
New York hotels are more expensive than Chicago's, and apparently there's no comparable Web site. But check the Web for discount packages, and look at http://newyork.citysearch.com/.
We recently stayed at a small hotel in the downtown Wall Street area, a good location.
Our room was small but nice, with a refrigerator in the room and computer access in the lobby, both great pluses for budget travelers. With tax it came to about $150 a night, a bargain in New York.
Snagging good tickets
To quickly find out what's playing in Chicago, grab the free weekly entertainment newspaper The Reader, available at bookstores and other locations.
It has reliable brief reviews, box office phone numbers and complete listings, including unusual venues such as classical music in churches, often free or inexpensive. You can access it on the Web at www.chicagoreader.com.
In Chicago, buy discount tickets at two downtown locations for Hot Tix, 78 W. Randolph, east of Clark, and at 163 E. Pearson at Michigan Avenue inside the Water Works Visitor Center.
If the shows or events you want are not listed, immediately go to the theater box offices for the tickets. Or call the theaters or event box offices to find out whether they will sell tickets directly. Either way, you avoid high service charges and bad seats through Ticketmaster.
New York's two discount ticket locations, TKTS at Times Square and downtown at John and Front Streets in the South Street Seaport area, are both outdoors, and they attract long lines most of the time.
We decided not to waste our precious vacation time standing in line in icy weather. Instead we hopped the subway and went straight to the Broadway theaters of the plays we wanted to see. We were able to buy good seats, albeit at full price. Later that night and the next day when we saw the shows, they were sold out.
We bought tickets for an off-Broadway play by calling the box office, but most Broadway theaters list the phone number for Ticketmaster, which adds a hefty service charge on each already expensive ticket.
To find out what's playing, turn to The New Yorker magazine's lists and reviews of the big shows and events in New York.
Smaller venues may be listed in weekly newspapers such as the Village Voice, www.villagevoice.com; the New York Press, www.nypress.com; and Time Out New York, www.timeoutnewyork.com
A new guidebook, Frommer's "NYC Free and Dirt Cheap" at $15.99, claims you sometimes can get tickets to sold-out shows in New York by going to the theater an hour or so before the show, where tickets may be released. But on a short vacation, we decided not to risk it.
In Chicago, tickets to sold-out events from the Lyric Opera to the Cubs usually are available that way. At Wrigley Field, try the box office before turning to ticket sellers outside. For the Lyric Opera, reverse the process.
If these plans fail, downtown Chicago's wide selection of movie theaters provides a fallback strategy for the evening. Films that never play in Peoria can be found in Chicago. The Reader has the complete listings and reviews.
The museums
In Chicago, find mind-bending art at The Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago near Water Tower Place. It's rarely crowded, and the displays change frequently. This small museum takes only a couple of hours to see and is a good place for lunch.
The Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington near the new Millennium Park on Michigan Avenue, offers free admission, an inexpensive restaurant and changing displays.
Seeing this glorious, restored historic building, formerly the Chicago Public Library, is always a treat, as is reading the story of how it was nearly demolished but saved by Maggie Daley, the former mayor's wife.
Other famous Chicago museums always worth seeing: The Art Institute, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum, which has a reciprocal agreement with Peoria's Lakeview Museum, so Lakeview members enter free.
A host of smaller museums also are worthwhile. Check the listings, the days and hours they are open and also find out which days allow free admission in The Reader.
Hot tip
For both cities, the big museums can generate long admission lines. To avoid them, buy tickets a day or two in advance through museum box offices or on the Web.
Even if there's a Ticketmaster service charge for these tickets, it won't be much since the entrance fees are low and the fees tend to be a percentage of the ticket price. Have the tickets held for you at the museum.
The Web ticket strategy worked well in New York, where lines to get into the newly renovated Museum of Modern Art, 74 E. 4th Street in midtown, were three hours or more, outside in cold weather. With our advance tickets, we walked right in.
This is a must-see museum for art and architecture lovers. It reopened in November after extensive changes designed by architect Yoshio Taniguchi.
Critics are now calling it the "red hot MoMa" and at the same time "a grand and elegant creation." Allow a half-day to see it all.
With its sculpture garden outdoors, Barrett Newman's huge sculpture "broken Obelisk" as a centerpiece indoors, and floors and rooms filled with the most famous modern art, sculpture and design of our times, the MoMa is simply amazing.
New York has so many museums that a 176-page booklet on them is available at visitor centers. We sampled the Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave., and the Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave. at 88th, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, now hosting an extensive show on Aztec and Central American Indian art and culture.
We also stopped by the tiny but intriguing Asia Society Museum, 725 Park Ave. at 70th St., where a wondrous collection of jewelry from India was displayed.
Food and more
Dinner for two in both New York and Chicago can cost more than the hotel room. But good food also is available at modest prices if you are careful.
We always eat breakfast or brunch and sometimes dinner at neighborhood cafes and restaurants, where prices are moderate. Museums can be a good choice for lunch. The art museums especially typically offer gourmet sandwiches and soups at moderate prices.
The Chicago Historical Society Museum, 1601 N. Clark, has interesting displays and a good lunch room, often with entertainment, a jazz pianist.
In New York, we ducked into the Park Avenue Plaza Building, 55 E. 52nd St., to warm up with coffee and a snack at a Starbucks there and lingered to hear jazz pianist Chick Folds, who has been playing there on weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. for years.
Chess players were concentrating on their game in a large corner of this atrium building, and art photography was displayed in another area.
If your hotel room has a refrigerator or you feel like a picnic, neighborhood grocery stores and delis in both cities sell sandwiches, salads and drinks at way below most restaurant or bar prices.
Sightseeing
You can always book commercial tours. But in New York with the handy subway pass, you can ride to the destinations via subway. Don't miss the World Trade Center site, which has sidewalk displays of the 9-11 attack and historical photos of the area and its development over the years. Other attractions:
- Ellis Island and its museum there can take an entire day.
- The Staten Island ferry with its view of the Statue of Liberty is free.
- The historic area around Wall Street contains excellent historical signs and small museums, including the Fraunces Tavern Museum, 54 Pearl St., at the site where George Washington gave his farewell address to the officers of the Continental Army in 1783. A lock of Washington's hair is on display.
- Even if you've been there before, see Times Square again for its vivid modern signs and sense of excitement.
Serendipity
New York and Chicago are so filled with interesting places that you never know what you will discover as you walk along the streets of these cities.
In New York, we saw people entering St. Bartholomew's Church, 109 E. 50th St., a lovely, historic building, and followed them to see the interior. Inside we found a classical music rehearsal of a baroque orchestra, a lovely free concert for a cold, winter afternoon.
In Chicago, we often find terrific jazz singers, pianists and other musicians playing in hotel bars along Michigan Avenue, with no cover charge.
At Millennium Park last summer, we attended a free classical music concert on a warm evening, which suddenly was followed by an extraordinary medieval-type Asian light show with costumed dancers bearing puppets and paper lanterns on poles, accompanied by Asian new age music. The dancers weaved through the park among the crowd for a half hour, creating an ethereal and astonishing arts experience.
So while a little advance planning can help you make the most of your trip, be open to making detours once you're there. Some of your most memorable moments may involve things you didn't anticipate.
(C) 2011 Peoria Journal Star. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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