Double Decker Bus Tours- NYC

My roommates and I moved to NYC last October and since then, we have All had flocks of visitors (which have all been wonderful! I love hosting friends) and lucky for us, our apartment has the room for it.
One of the great things to happen when visitors come is we go out and explore the city more than we normally would. We forget the laundry, skip the gym, go out to eat instead of cooking in and we hit the pavement even when it is rainy, cold or windy. We are tourists again in our new town.

Our latest visitors included Geoff's mom, brother, sister-in-law and their 2 kids who are almost 3 and 5 years old. They came and took over our apartment for two weeks and I wish they could have stayed longer!!! During their stay, I only had a handful of full days with them. One of those days we took a Double Decker Bus Tour on the downtown loop.
This is a "Hop on, hop off" bus experience which is really a neat idea because the tour takes you to a lot of the "must see" sights of Manhattan, lets you hop off to explore them and then hop back on to go to the next sight.


(We ended up not doing a lot of the hopping off since we had 2 little ones with us and a lot of the places we stopped, they had already been to.) Plus, you get some pretty amazing views of NYC from the top of the bus especially riding through Times Square.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who comes to New York for a few days and wants to see and do a lot in a little amount of time. (It also leaves time to shop and see a Broadway show- two other things you must do here.)
My recommendation, start as early as you can in the morning so you can spend time at the different sites. The bus ride alone without hopping off takes about two hours.

The stops for the downtown loop include Greenwich Village, Times Square, Empire State Building, as well as the Union Square shopping district, Soho, Chinatown, Little, East Village, Rockefeller Center, the World Trade Center site, the New York City Police Museum and more.

You can even upgrade to the All Loops Tour (48hrs) for just $10 more! You get the Downtown loop plus the Uptown, Brooklyn and Night loops!


At first I thought the price of $44 was a little steep, but after riding up top and seeing all the locations it offers, it is really a great price for what you are able to see. This isn't the only tour, there are a few to choose from to match what you want to see and do. There is the one day, a 48 hour, 72 hour bus tour, evening tour, some include tickets into Museums or Top of the Rock... while I think you must take the subway as well (even if just to experience the wide variety of people on it) this is a great way to hit the sites and not get lost on the way. Make sure you book online and save yourself a few $$'s as well! :)


Check out all the Tours here- Double Decker Tour Website