December 31, 2006

New York on the cheap -- at least in January

Once the holidays are over and the tourists go home, New York hotel prices will drop dramatically and the deals will roll out for everything from meals to museums.

Winter Restaurant Week is scheduled for two weeks. It starts January 22 through 26, skips the weekend and then resumes January 29 through February 2. Three-course prix-fixe meals are offered at some of the city's top restaurants for $24.07 at lunch and $35 at dinner. Tax, tip and beverages are extra. participating restaurants include Mario Batali's Del Posto, Morimoto, Gramercy Tavern, Tabla, Telepan and Nobu (all lunch only,) as well as Lure Fishbar, Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill, Perry Street, Spice Market, Tribeca Grill and Nougatine at Jean Georges Restaurant (lunch and dinner.) Reservations should be made sooner rather than later.

The annual Kids Night on Broadway, scheduled for January 30 and 31, offers free kids tickets for Broadway shows including "Hairspray," "The Drowsy Chaperone" "The Color Purple" and "The Phantom of the Opera."

Two-for-one museum admission is among the benefits of the NY Times Arts & Leisure Weekend (January 5 through 8.) Participating museums include the American Museum of Natural History, the Guggenheim, the Frick Collection, the International Center of Photography an the New-York Historical Society. You can also get two-for-one tickets for Broadway and Off-Broadway, 20 percent off restaurant tabs at places such as the Sotheby's Cafe and Umbertos Clam House. See the NYT A&L page for details.

Starting January 16, the Museum of Modern Art will give it away for free, sort of, as it opens "sleepwalkers" on its exterior walls. The cinematic art experience will mark the first U.S. large-scale public art project from Doug Aitken.

There's also a $1 concert a Carnegie Hall on January 6, and the Under the Radar theater festival, with $15 tickets from January 17 through 28. Come January, the new Broadway hit musical "Spring Awakening," will again have seats available on the stage for $31.25.

If you have an American Express card, you can take advantage of the Paint the Town deals on hotels, restaurants and Broadway shows (through February 28.)

A number of museums and gardens have regular free hours every month, including the Brooklyn Museum’s Target First Saturdays (January 6,) with a Winter Ball featuring the Vienna Festival Orchestra and free screenings of “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” “Moulin Rouge,” and “The Naked City.”

A number of tail-end holiday events will extend into January, as well. The free Trolley Tours of Prospect Park in Lights wrap up on the evenings of January 6 and 7. And the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree doesn’t come down until January 8.

Other ongoing deals include a $5 discount at the Museum of Sex (through Jan. 26,) and two-for-one coupons and gift shop discounts at many of the Museums of Lower Manhattan including the police and fire museums, Fraunces Tavern, the Skyscraper Museum and the South Street Seaport Museum (coupons in pdf format.)

As for hotels, the deals are plentiful.

The Wellington Hotel, featured in the "Borat" movie, has a January Borat special room rate of $117.13 a night, the price the fake Kazakhstan journalist pays for his stay during the movie.

For fancier lodgings, two of the biggest hotel makeovers of 2006 both are running deals starting in January. The London NYC has "introductory rates" from $399 in January, compared with the $699 it was charging in November during its grand re-opening. For the Gramercy Park Hotel deal, if you book three consecutive nights in a suite, the third night's on the house. (This deal actually runs through March but must be booked during January.) Another third night deal is good at several other hotels -- including The Carlyle, The Pierre, St. Regis and Mandarin Oriental -- if you pay with American Express.

The Salisbury Hotel, located in the thick of things on 57th Street over the Calvary Baptist Church, has a People of Faith deal for $169 a night; the Blue Moon on the Lower East Side drops its rates to $180 (it's lowest rate since opening in early 2006,) for January and February; the Iroquois January special starts at $239; and the Ritz Carlton on Central Park's "Mary Poppins" package takes off at the end of January, starting at $990.

Additionally, NYC & Co., the city's official tourism bureau, is pushing several deals for the "Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Period" (January 2 through 15) with partners including Virgin Holidays, United Vacations and British Airways.

If you're coming to NYC by train, Amtrak has a deal for AAA members starting in January that can get you a companion ticket for half price. Or by plane, JetBlue's deals start at $49 one way to New York. And since fancy people also enjoy a deal, do note that there is a new all-business class airline, L'Avion, flying between New York and Paris with a starting price of $999 round-trip.

December 31, 2006 10:21 AM in Cheap Stuff, Foodology, Hotelology, Kids

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