Note: I have the iPhone so I am especially interested in iPhone apps– but realize that many of these app creators have made compatible apps on other phones, such as Android and Blackberry. Therefore, I link to the main app website where possible so you can check out the full app no matter what phone you use.

NYC Way
NYC Way is my new favorite app. Wow! The description says, “Get the app that is endorsed by the Mayor of New York City!” Yeah, no kidding. I could probably write a shorter review of what this app does NOT do…

Here’s a very brief breakdown of all the things this app has:

Locate restaurants by neighborhood, cuisine, GPS location, menus, and more.
Locate coffee shops the same way.
Find nearby Banks and ATMs.
View the list of nearby attractions.
View lists of free attractions.
Find restrooms.
Check out local deals and offers by stores.
Find museums, hotels, places kids like, and more!

What I like about the app is the ability to find things either by browsing or by viewing that’s nearby by GPS. This is definitely a must-have app. And it’s free!

HopStop

HopStop is a city transit directory. While i have many NYC transit directories on my phone, I always go back to HopStop. It’s so easy to use, it’s so versatile, and I can save my future trips so easily, too! Believe me, the last thing you want to do when you climb out of Penn Station is try to locate a subway station while masses of humanity swirl about you.

HopStop doesn’t just cover the subway– it will check the MTS bus schedules, taxi routes, bicycle trails, and pedestrian paths. It’s an excellent app. Again– free!

NYC Mate

The NYCMate shows all the subway routes in one easy map. I LOVE that I can pinch the screen to zoom in close on the map.

The app also has a NYC street map with icons showing stations for transit. While this app is not for scheduling routes like HopStop is, it’s great for viewing the subway routes and getting an idea of where you are.

MyBus

MyBus is kind of like HopStop for the city bus. Technically, the subway is the fastest way to travel Manhattan’s busy streets, but the bus is much more enjoyable because you see more of the city this way (albeit, through tinted windows). The bus and subway fare, according to this writing, remain the same charge so it’s not any cheaper to ride the subway. When I have a long way to travel, I take the subway. When I only need to travel a few blocks, I take the bus. This app helps you find the best bus to get to where you need to go!

iPhone Compass

The Compass app comes preloaded with the iPhone. I include it here because it can be very, very helpful when you need to find your way around the city. For example, your HopStop instruction may say, “Get out at Penn Station. Walk 1.2 blocks southwest.” Ummm…. where the heck is southwest?! It’s very easy to get discombobulated when you come up from a subway station– it’s like walking into a human tornado. Cars, buses, people, lights– all swirling around you! The compass helps you get an idea of where you are and where you need to go.

Onavo

Onavo isn’t a travel app, not exactly. It’s a wireless-bill saving app. Onavo compresses wireless data, saving you bucks on your wireless plan. When visiting New York City, you will no doubt be using up a lot of data just to get around. Onavo helps condense the data and thus the bill. I have been using Onavo for about a year now, and I never go over my data plan anymore. I think it works great.

Thus completes my “best of the best” New York City apps. I have loved these apps and they work well for me. What apps have you found useful for travel? Please share!

March:
Alexander Hamilton National Historic Site, Manhattan
Metropolitan Museum of Art/The Cloisters, Manhattan

April:

May:
Fort Stanwix National Historic Site, Rome
DeadApple Tours, Manhattan
Other touristy things in Manhattan

June:
Philip Schulyer House, Albany, NY
New York State Library and Museum, Albany, NY

July:
Erie Canal Boat Museum, Chittenango, NY

August:
Lake Placid Olympic Center, Adirondacks
Whiteface Mountain, Adirondacks

September:

October:
Plymouth, Massachusetts

November:
Lake George, NY
Trip to Vermont?

As you can see, the itinerary needs some fleshing out. Two trips per month is enough for the spring and late autumn months, but I’d like to have a few more activities for July, August, September, and October. If you would like us to visit a certain place, feel free to use my contact form for suggestions. I’d love to hear from you!

HAHA! I liked that last sign. It alludes to the old Burma Shave road signs, popular in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s when Americans hit the roads in droves. It was a time of great optimism and prosperity. The road trip was king.

Burma Shave was a shaving cream, manufactured by the Burma-Vita company. Sales for the cream were less than enthusiastic, so the company started an advertising campaign that later entered the annals of American culture. They placed signs with brief snippets of limericks along roadways. At first the signs were pure advertisements, such as these:

A shave
That’s real
No cuts to heal
A soothing
Velvet after-feel
-Burma-Shave

You’ve laughed
At our signs
For many a mile
Be a sport
Give us a trial
-Burma-Shave

Later, the signs became little stories or humorous admonitions against speeding and driving drunk. Always, the last sign said simply “Burma Shave.”

Hardly a driver
Is now alive
Who passed
On hills
At 75
-Burma-Shave

Past
Schoolhouses
Take it slow
Let the little
Shavers grow
-Burma-Shave

If daisies
Are your
Favorite flower
Keep pushin’ up those
Miles per hour
-Burma-Shave

The actual shaving cream was never as popular as the company’s advertising campaign. Sales declined and Burma-Shave was sold to Philip Morris in 1963. The company pulled the ads and thus ended another quirky icon in American road trip travel history. A shame.

But there are a few of us who still remember Burma Shave! It was nice to see that the Window King of Holland Patent remembered.

Dumb truck!

Oh, this is better.

Fraunces Tavern is where George Washington said his farewell to his officers in 1783 after years of military service in the Continental Army. It is said that many men openly cried while Washington gave his speech. Little did they know that the Great American Experiment was just beginning. Washington would be back in a few years, inaugurated as President of the United States at nearby Federal Hall on Wall Street.

The original building is gone, having suffered a series of fires and renovations so that no one knows exactly what the building looked like before 1890. Originally, on this site a house was built in 1671 as a residence for wealthy New York Mayor New York Mayor Stephanus van Cortlandt. It was replaced with another residence in 1719. Samuel Fraunces purchased the building in 1792. He converted it into a tavern and named it The Queen’s Head.

The New York Sons of Liberty secretly met at the tavern before and during the American Revolution. Did you know that New York had its own little version of the Boston Tea Party? In 1765, fed up with taxes and encroaching liberties from England, a handful of patriots dressed as American Indians infiltrated a British cargo ship carrying the dreaded British tea. They forced the captain to apologize for the cargo, and promptly dumped the tea into New York Harbor. And thus our love for coffee was begun.

We lunched in the dining room before perusing the museum upstairs. Our lunch experience was so-so; read my review of lunch at Fraunces Tavern at my other blog, WowChowCooking. Admission to the museum upstairs is free if you purchase a meal in the dining room. That was a pleasant surprise.

The upstairs is filled with paraphernalia. We watched a brief movie about the history of Fraunces Tavern and then wandered the rooms at our own leisure.

This is a photo of the Clinton Dining Room, so named because Governor George Clinton dined here.

I love the Federal style architecture and decor.

This is the bowl that held the turtle soup reincorporating the New York Chamber of Commerce at the Clinton dinner. Turtle meat seemed to be a delicacy for such occasions (according to menus of the past that served it regularly for important functions). I have never had it. I doubt anyone would eat anything lugged from the Hudson anymore.

We saw many amazing pieces of odd paraphernalia, including a portion of Washington’s wooden coffin, some of Washington’s hair and his dentures! Rome may have dozens of nails that pierced Christ’s limbs but we have Washington’s hair!

Assorted relics of pre-modern warfare littered the display cases. Some treasures were discovered by little boys digging in their back yards. 

Fraunces Tavern Museum also keeps the precious original diary of Colonel Benjamin Talmadge. We have read some of his memoirs and find his accounts of the Revolutionary War fascinating!

The tavern museum also had some very interesting paperwork regarding the history of the building. After the Revolution, the Treasury, War and Foreign Affairs departments were based here while New York City served as our first capital of the country. Everything was later moved to Philadelphia when the capital was there, and now to Washington, DC.

By 1900, the tavern was poised for demolition, to make way for “progress.” The Sons of the American Revolution wanted to buy the building, but the tavern owner refused all offers. The Daughters of the American Revolution begged the owner to sell, but all offers were refused again. I found it very odd that the owner was so determined to see the building destroyed, despite the monetary offers and knowing about the incredible history of the site.

The City intervened and created the Hewitt Act, enabling the Sons of the American Revolution to purchase the property and restore it for posterity. The building opened on December 4, 1907, the 124th anniversary of Washington’s farewell speech.

Did you know that there was a terrorist act at the Fraunces Tavern? On January 24, 1975, at 1:35pm, a bomb exploded at the entrance door to the tavern’s Angler’s and Tarpon Club. The bomb exploded in the middle of lunch hour, killing four people and injuring 53. A Puerto Rican nationalist group, F.A.L.N. (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional) cliamed responsibility for the bombing. The FALN said that the bombing was retaliation for “the CIA-ordered bomb that murdered Angel Luis Chavonnier and Eddie Ramos, two innocent young workers who supoorted [sic] Puerto Rican independence” and the “maiming of ten innocent persons…in a Mayaguez, Puerto Rico dining place on Saturday the eleventh of January, 1975.” No one was ever arrested or convicted for the crime.

We stayed overnight at the Best Western Inn on 121 Burgin Drive in Cobleskill. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Inn situated very near a shopping complex but up a hill where the views are gorgeous.

Best Western Inn graciously provided my large family two adjoining rooms to write this review of their facilities. I had no idea what to expect when we arrived, but I can now say that the place is phenomenal! First things first…

We arrived at check-in time, 3pm. The Inn is a one-story building, featuring a slew of rooms with double beds, a swimming pool, a fitness center, a restaurant, a bowling alley and a lovely lobby! I was wowed by all the amenities. Besides the typical free morning coffee, Best Western Inn gives free wireless Internet service and a complementary issue of USA Today for all guests.

Check in was prompt and I was very impressed with the ladies at the front desk. I’ve been to a number of hotels (my husband has even worked at a few) and we’ve had our share of bad experiences with front desk employees. The Best Western Inn ladies were a breath of fresh, hospitable air. We were all extremely delighted with the friendly, easy-going manner of the ladies. I’m always a little nervous meeting new people, but these ladies put me at ease. They quickly got us settled and made us feel very welcome.

The rooms are comfortable. Very clean (I checked, as I always do). The bathrooms are enormous and well insulated. With the door closed, you could not clearly hear the ventilation fan or other bathroom noises. The heat was comfortable, I didn’t have to adjust it at all. As a matter of fact, the rooms were so cozy and we were so tired after our excursion through Howe Caverns that we collapsed into the chairs and beds and just relaxed for a while.

I perused some of the typical hotel literature in the rooms. The Best Western Inn has a big binder on the table that is filled with information about the community: restaurants, things to do, grocery venues, etc. I was impressed with how comprehensive the information was. Some hotels only give you the bare minimum, but the Best Western binder offered choice after choice for things to do.

Later, we decided to go bowling. The Inn sports a few lanes at the back of the hotel. The hotel actually sprang up around the bowling alley, years ago. The lanes are clean and well-maintained. When we arrived, a large group of kids came in to play, so the place was busy.

After bowling, we wandered around a little, enjoying the peacefulness of the hotel. I love the swimming pool area. Since it was November and I hadn’t packed my bathing suit, I had to forego swimming. But I enjoyed gazing at the water.

The Best Western Inn has a restaurant, called B. W. Delaney’s. I had done some searching of local restaurants but found the menu at Delaney’s to be the most affordable for our large family. The restaurant is comfortable and the meals are good. They have a fine grilled salmon dish and my son loved his fish and chips. If you plan on eating out, I recommend B.W. Delaney’s. The food is good and the prices are the most reasonable around.

The Inn sees a lot of business from the local SUNY Cobleskill facility. There were a number of families and business men staying that night, I noticed. The rooms are well-insulated. I could hear nothing from the other rooms at all. I did hear muffled noises from outside, as our rooms were in the front of the hotel near the parking area. It didn’t bother me as the noises were barely noticeable. If you want a very quiet environment, however, I recommend that you ask for a room in the back of the hotel.

The beds are extremely comfortable and I felt spoiled with the feather pillows. My husband and I got up early the next morning and left to have some coffee at Delaney’s while the kids slept in. It was a beautiful morning.

The location of the hotel is so peaceful. The view outside the restaurant windows is breathtakingly beautiful. We watched the sun appear and the mist rise from the hills as we sipped our coffee. Later, the kids joined us for a big breakfast (waffles, pancakes, eggs, toast, bagels!). The service — everyone at the hotel — is just so friendly and pleasant.

The Best Western Inn touts itself as “your home away from home,” and we really felt that way. Everything was so relaxed! The hotel does a great job of making you feel comfortable and provides everything you need. I can’t believe how friendly everyone is! Even the cleaning lady was smiling and pleasant.

The rates are very affordable, much more than a hotel closer to Albany. Since the Best Western Inn is situated between Albany and Cooperstown, you can save quite a wad of money staying here and simply driving to the city. The drive itself is very lovely, as the views are superb.

Check out the Best Western Inn if you will be staying in the area. I highly recommend it!

Best Western Plus Inn of Cobleskill
website: BestWesternCobleskill.com
121 Burgin Drive
Cobleskill, New York 12043
Phone: (518) 234-4321
Toll Free: 1800-WESTERN

Note: I was given a free night’s stay at this hotel in exchange for this review. My opinion of this hotel and restaurant are 100% genuine and honest. Thanks for reading!