hotels/ hostels close to penn station, new york city

What are your dates in May?

We stayed at the Chelsea International Hostel (8th Ave and W 20th Street) - double room and very basic, but a nice area, and I understand it's been renovated in the last few years - it needed it. (Also 50s from Australia, but long-term hostellers as well).

If worse becomes worst, if you find nothing affordable near Penn Station or in Midtown Manhattan, consider staying at one of the airports and commuting into the city each day. That would mean taking a hotel van to the airport and then an airporter-type van into the city.

I checked a few dates on Hotwire.com and it is offering a 3.5-star hotel at Newark Airport for $49 plus taxes and fees per night. That easily pays for your airporter costs.

As for staying in Manhattan, please don't restrict your search to Penn Station. Other then Macy's big store and the Empire State Building, there's not much of tourist interest right there. Any Midtown hotel location should work for you and be easily accessible from Penn Station by subway or a short taxi ride.

And this was offered up by someone the other day after a request for a budget hotel - <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://starhotelny.com/index.php">Chelsea Star</a>.

newark airport is REALLY FAR from NYC, in terms of a daily commute for sight-seeing and such.

when i fly out of newark, i usually give myself an hour and a half to get there from my place in a relatively convenient part of Brooklyn.

it will cost at least $10-15 to take a shuttle bus from any airport to any point in Manhattan, per way.

the airports in NYC are generally not well connected to public transportation, and they're really far from where the "action" is. that sort of thing might work well in other, smaller cities where the Airport is just directly connected to the local subway/metro, as is the case in Boston (for instance). but it in NYC it'll be a huge pain in the ass and you'll probably end up spending enough on cabs and various other complicated modes of transportation to make up for the cheaper room.

if the ONLY thing you can find that suits your budget is at Newark Airport, you should probably just pick another city to visit that is more in your price range. because i can promise that if you plan to stay over there and commute into NYC every morning (especially if you want to do it via airport shuttles and such), you will wish you hadn't bothered.

OP, how much time to you intend to spend in New York City?

Did you look at the Chelsea Savoy? Its an unknown hotel and about $150/night. On the corner of 23rd and 7th, which is a little noisy, but a 2 stop subway ride from Penn Station (I actually do the walk with a wheeled carryon often - 1/2 a mile)

also, check out the Inn on 23rd Street - or the Chelsea Hotel (a dive, but a historical one)

Probably the best neighborhood to be in Manhattan right now - I'm biased, I live there

when you get to Baltimore - be sure to have a lump crab cake! Faidley's in Lexington Market was incredible.

#5, much of NYC's workforce commutes longer distances to work each day than to or from Newark Airport.

Let's do some math:
$63 Newark hotel and tax and fees (a guess on taxes and fees)
$22 Olympia Airporter roundtrip from Newark Airport to Midtown
$85 TOTAL and remember this is for a 3.5-star hotel, not some dump.

Olympia takes 15 to 20 minutes to reach Midtown at off-peak hours, but significantly longer during rush hours, which hopefully the OP will avoid.

If the OP can find something near JFK Airport, Kennedy Airport is superbly connected to any subway station anywhere in NYC by public transportation. From any terminal, you can take a $5 AirTrain to your choice of stations for the A or E trains. Both serve Midtown Manhattan for a $2 fare, but the E train hardly makes any stops until it gets there. That's a total of $7 each way.

Vans from LaGuardia Airport cost $10 -13 each way.

It's not about maths, it's about the soul. If this is your one week (?) in NYC, you run the risk of destroying the experience by staying at Newark or an equivalent distance. For a tourist, the joy of the place is walking, day and night, and taking short subway rides; the fact that residents travel further is beside the point. So OP stay in a good neighbourhood (we liked Chelsea, but would stay further downtown next time - around 14th Street or lower, but lots of tourists like it around Times Square) and don't worry much about proximity to Penn Station - unless you're only there overnight. <BR><BR>Manhattan is small and feels compact, given the size of NY overall - getting to any particular point is rarely a drama. Please don't stay at Newark - returning a rental car there and getting back was something I'm glad I only did once.