Over at the Australian Frequent Flyer forums, irv is seeking input as to how many days visiting New York City might be too many. He and his family are booked for 10 days and he is mildly concerned they might see everything worth seeing and become bored before the time is up.

Needless to say, this is a pretty impossible question to answer – though plenty try.

For some, 10 days is just about right. Others think 3-4 days is plenty to get a taste of the Big Apple. And still others could easily visit NYC for two weeks every other six months and never get bored with the city. But if you are planning a trip to New York, this thread offers some great suggestions for places to visit and services to take advantage of:

Not sure if the Big Apple Greeter Service is still available, its free, you just pay for the volunteers bus fares and meal – we had a wonderful lady but it does go back to 2001 when we spent two weeks in NYC. She took us all over Harlem, a gospel service ( not touristy) and a meal near the church, we then went on to Duke Ellingtons old building where Marjorie Eliot used to hold jazz afternoons with some of New Yorks musicians all for a gold coin donation, it was fabulous ~DontGetMeStarted

We had 2.5 weeks….and we decided to break up the middle with one night in Philadelphia (Liberty and the birthplace of the USA) and 3 nights in Washington DC. Amtrak made it very easy and cheap to visit both cities.

 

We also based ourselves in two different areas of NY in doing this. This made for more do do, as each area has it own flavour and experience. ~lovetravellingoz

But as I read this discussion I realized I had read possibly hundreds very similar to it over the years on various travel communities. And it is one of the go-to article themes for any travel magazine. Yet, as far as I can tell, no one has launched a website to address this particular dilemma.

There would seem to be room for a site that describes recommended itineraries for various major cities, based on stay length, interests and perhaps even the area of the city where you will be based.

You have an 8-hour layover at JFK? Enter that into the website, and maybe select some general interests (art, sports, food, architecture, etc), and the site would spit out a route of attractions and suggested transportation methods.

Six days in the French Quarter in New Orleans planned? Fill in your interests and see what pops up. If the itineraries for days 4, 5 and 6 don’t sound all that interesting to you, perhaps three days in the Big Easy might suit your particular tastes better.

What do you think? Would you use a site like this? Does it already exist and I just haven’t discovered it? Or is this simply too subjective a topic to be boiled down to a set of data points and suggested itineraries, and is better handled in travel communities and articles?

Read the thread in its entirety: Is ten days in New York too long