Empire State Building: surprisingly sketchy. We wanted to go to the top, so we waited in a line that stretched outside. There were people asking everyone "Do you have your ticket yet?" (they even had shirts that said that), and it turns out they were selling some sort of virtual tour of NY that I think still included a ride to the top of the building, but was more expensive. Then they were telling people it was a two hour wait if you waited in the "real" line, which was blatantly not true (maybe 30 minutes). We were handed a couple of different flyers while waiting in line, where we discovered you could pay more and go to the observatory 20 floors above the usual place. Or you could pay more and cut to the front of the line! We chose to pay more by buying a CityPass which included tickets to museums we were planning to see. More on that later.

Metropolitan Museum of Art was confusing. We bought the CityPass which included admission there, but it normally costs a $20 suggested donation. Does this not seem kinda sleazy? I'm guessing that since we used our "ticket" then the museum gets some money for it, or something, but it's weird. Also, the museum is very large and lots of exhibits were closed for renovation, which sucks. We got a little lost in European Paintings. Then we were going to have afternoon tea, but not for $24/person. Yikes. This was the only other time we used the CityPass, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you know you're definitely going to enough places to save money.

More...