Excelsior Hotel Rating: 3.0 Pearls

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City

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The Excelsior looks out onto the Hayden Planetarium and Museum of Natural History park -- a refreshing vista of green grass and trees. Guests are a stone's throw from the Hayden Planetarium, Central Park, and the Museum of Natural History -- three of the city's best attractions.

Safe, residential, professional, and full of families, the Upper West Side is sandwiched between Manhattan's Central Park and Riverside Park. Beautiful low-rise brownstones blend with tall, swanky apartment buildings on the numbered streets that branch off Columbus Avenue, Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, the area's major thoroughfares. Kid-friendly museums like the Children's Museum of Manhattan, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Hayden Planetarium make this a prime location for families looking to get away from the tourist crowds in Times Square.

• Less than one block from the B, C subway lines; four blocks from the 1 subway line
• Less than one block from Central Park
• 25-minute subway ride to Times Square
• 25-minute subway ride to the Empire State Building
• 45-minute subway ride or $18 taxi to the ferry terminal to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
• 25-minute bus ride to Rockefeller Center
• Less than a block from the American Museum of Natural History
• 15-minute bus ride to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the "Met") and 25-minute subway ride or $7 taxi to the Museum of Modern Art (the "MoMa")

The Standard Deluxe room

• Flat-screen TVs
• In-room safe
• In-room workdesk
• Full-length mirror
• Standard rooms are a bit small, and only include a queen-size bed (not a king); but this is very common among New York hotels in this price range
• One- and two-bedroom suites have separate living areas with French doors, couches, and second televisions
• All rooms have either Central Park or northern views.

New York has three nearby airports: JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark (in New Jersey). Getting to town from JFK or LaGuardia is usually more convenient than getting there from Newark, but travel times are heavily dependent on the time of day and traffic conditions. From JFK, a taxi to anywhere in Manhattan costs a flat rate of $45 and takes around an hour in average conditions. From LaGuardia, a metered cab ride to midtown Manhattan costs about $40 and can take 30 minutes if traffic is light, three times that if it's bad. Rides from Newark cost at least $40 (plus tolls) and can take more than 90 minutes. It's customary to tip your driver 15 to 25 percent.

Those looking to save some cash can use the privately run shuttle buses that are available at all three airports for about $14 per person. For more information on the shuttles, go to Super Shuttle or New York Airport Service. Public transit is also available for as little as $7 per person, but travel can take up to two hours and involve a lot of lugging bags up and down stairways.

For mass-transit directions right to the hotel, check out HopStop.com.