Visiting NYC-- travel advice appreciated

I'm taking a last minute trip to visit my cousin who got a summer internship in NYC.

I'll be staying in Manhattan on 63rd street near 3rd avenue (that's the best I can do, don't know the exact cross streets).

Anyone have any suggestions for bars or other things I should check out while I'm down there?

I've only been to New York one other time and I was five. All I remember was riding the subway and my dad telling me not to look at the bums. In fact, most of our trips involved my dad telling me not to look at the bums.

So aside from avoiding bums, what should I do while in NYC?

 

Go to Dylan's Candy Bar, 60th/3rd, that should keep you busy for a while. Greatest candy store ever.

You're just a few blocks from the park, just go west, can't miss it.

 

Thanks guys. I hope I see the midget.

 

Go up to the Amsterdam, around 80th street on the Upper West Side. That's one of my favorite areas in the city and has a bunch of cool pubs where you can get good food and not-so-expensive (at least by NYC standards) drinks. One of my favorite places in the Gin Mill. They have half off all drinks for happy hour Mon-Fri and good burgers/sandwiches.

 

P.J. Clarke's, 55th and 3rd. Very comfortable saloon, and have a hamburger, too. Dan Jenkins used to hang out there. It was a "sports bar" when that meant it was favored by people in sports, rather than being a place with 88 televisions showing various sports channels.

 

Ragu can tell you which trains to avoid... [/crossthreading]

 

Baker Street at (I believe) 63rd and 1st is a good little bar. Loud though. Piotr and ralphwiggum can vouch for it. Don't make out with any random English soccer fans though. Never ends well.

Or so I've heard.

 

The East 60s are not exactly the mean streets. But you can see weird shit in even the best neighborhoods. The 60s were always something I usually just passed through en route to someplace else, for some reason. You can find vast arrays of interesting places to eat on Second Ave. from 75th through 86th and from 42nd to about 57th. Just take a walk along either stretch and walk into whatever strikes your fancy. Those neighborhoods are very safe by Manhattan standards if you use common sense.

I've always found the streets of Chinatown and Little Italy unbelieveably foul and a real appetite-killer, so I usually stuck uptown for either cuisine. Pig Heaven was always my fave uptown Chinese place:

http://pigheaven.biz/

 

I like this.

 

Seconded for P.J. Clarke's.

 

That's our favorite area to hang out as well. Hi Life is a cool place at 83rd and Amsterdam. Flor de Mayo is right up the street, sweet Peruvian/Asian/"best chicken in the city" restaurant that is really easy on the wallet. Across from there Silk Road Palace, Chinese restaurant with free all-you-can drink wine. (a nice place to go if you want to get drunk fairly quickly).

And also in that same area is an ice cream shop, can't remember the name now, that also has really cheap beer. It's sort of a strange combination (and although it wasn't a midget on a leash, I was in there once when a large German Shepherd was just wandering around for 45 minutes, unleashed, unlike the midget), but the ice cream is good and drinks are cheap. It's on the east side of the street.