Tips for Navigating New York City
Tips for Navigating New York City
New York City can be quite overwhelming.
Metro Tours wants to help make your time here as easy and enjoyable as possible.
Taxi rides aren’t prohibitively expensive, and all offer the convenience of credit card payment, but we believe the best way to get to know NYC is on foot.
With that in mind, we have put together a list of tricks, tips and info to help you navigate around Manhattan.
Be sure to check out our post about subway etiquette for some more specific subway tips!
1.) Most of our numbered streets are one-way. Odd numbered streets go west and even numbered streets go east. This will help keep you oriented in the right direction. Side note: By car, you can cross town going in either direction on 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 59th, 72nd, 86th and 96th streets which go both east and west.
2.) Fifth Avenue splits the streets between east and west. Address numbers change in increments of 100 by every avenue.
3.) From First to Eleventh Avenue, each avenue alternates in direction. However, Third Avenue is two-way up until 24th Street where it becomes north bound only. Fourth Avenue runs only north until it becomes the two-way Park Avenue.
4.) On a North-South street, odd-numbered buildings are on the west side and on an East-West Street, odd numbered buildings are on the north side.
5.) It will be tough to hail a cab between 4 and 5 pm when many drivers switch shifts.
6.) While we are on the topic of cab hailing, double check around you to ensure you aren’t popping out in front of someone else’s attempts to hail – we call this “upstreaming” and it’s an easy way to make locals mad!
7.) GoogleMaps, GoogleMaps, GoogleMaps. And if you need more assistance, reach out to us! We are here to help: laura@metrotoursusa.com, justin@metrotoursusa.com.