Seven of the ten are in Manhattan. Uptown, The Plaza stands on Fifth Avenue at the corner of Central Park, and The Carlyle is on Madison Avenue at 76th Street, a block from the park on the residential Upper East Side. The Fifth Avenue Hotel in NoMad and Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street sit between Midtown and downtown. Downtown, The Beekman is a block from City Hall Park near the Brooklyn Bridge, and Nine Orchard and citizenM New York Bowery are twelve minutes apart on the Lower East Side, among bars and restaurants that stay busy late. Across the East River, 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge is in Brooklyn Bridge Park, just south of the bridge, and The William Vale is in Williamsburg, with Manhattan on the skyline rather than at the door. The tenth, TWA Hotel, is at JFK: an airport stay, for the night you land, the night before you fly or a stopover.
From JFK, every route into the city starts on the AirTrain, free between terminals and $8.75 to Jamaica or Howard Beach. Counting the AirTrain, the E train from Jamaica takes about 50 minutes to Midtown, $11.75 in all, and the Long Island Rail Road about 30 minutes to Penn Station or Grand Central Madison for $14 off peak or $16 at peak; by way of Howard Beach, the A reaches Lower Manhattan in about an hour. A yellow cab to Manhattan is a flat $70, or $76.75 with the pick-up fee, surcharges and congestion toll, and $81.75 from 4pm to 8pm on weekdays, before tolls and tip; to Brooklyn the meter runs. From Newark, the AirTrain and NJ Transit reach Penn Station in about 30 minutes for $17.25. LaGuardia has no train, but the Q70 bus to the subway at Jackson Heights is free.
Once in, tap a contactless card or phone at the gate and ignore every other ticket. A subway or bus ride is $3.00 with a free transfer within two hours, and once the same card has paid $35 in seven days the rest of that week is free. In Manhattan, walking is the default and the grid makes it easy: The Plaza to The Carlyle is 23 minutes on foot. The subway earns its keep on the long runs and under the river to Brooklyn, where the NYC Ferry, at $4.50, is the better ride, calling at DUMBO for 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge and North Williamsburg for The William Vale.
It is an all-year city, and the calendar moves the price more than the weather. January and February are the cheapest months in the city tourism office's hotel figures, and the coldest: 4.2C by day in January, with February the snowiest. Spring warms quickly, to 16.6C in April and 21.9C in May. July is the hot month at 29.4C, with nights above 20C into August. September is the dearest month, with the UN General Assembly in town in its second half; October, at 18.1C, is the gentler alternative. The city fills again for the marathon on the first Sunday of November, for Thanksgiving week and from Christmas to New Year, when December averages 6.8C by day. Rain, about 1,260 mm a year, is spread evenly, so there is no dry season to wait for.
The honest part. The price on the screen is not the price you pay. Room taxes add 14.75% plus $3.50 a night everywhere in the city, and five of the ten charge a nightly fee on top: $65 plus tax at The Plaza, partly returned as a $50 food and drink credit, $45.89 plus tax at The Beekman, $45 plus tax at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge and at The William Vale, and $19.83 plus tax at TWA Hotel, which also adds 3% to the room rate. Entry rooms are small, 14 square metres at citizenM New York Bowery, about 19 for a Petite Chelsea and 21 for Nine Orchard's Studio Queen, with a cheaper Nook below it, so the second category is often worth the step up. And tipping is part of the bill: 18 to 20% at the table, 15 to 20% in a cab and $3 to $5 a day for housekeeping.
