Manhattan’s meatpacking district near Battery Park is nothing if not chic; it has the city’s best entertainment, an Apple store, theaters, and designer clothing stores. And it’s home to one of the best New York City hotel ideas around – it’s the Jane. An experience of the Jane is bound to leave you impressed with how there is practically every trapping of the luxury hotel experience included – albeit, somewhat downsized. You walk in, and the bellman, tricked out in all the requisite regalia, greets you like you were a visiting dignitary. When you go up to your room, and the hushed elevator slides to a halt at your floor, you are announced to your presidential suite; and inside, are all your regular luxury hotel trappings – a great bed, a large screen plasma, a high thread count bedspreads, and the (communal) bathroom has rainhead showers. There is just one little difference though – the room is just about the size of a very high-priced train compartment.

The Jane is, has to be, the cream of the New York City hotel experience. Because you get this experience for far less than $100 a night. If you stayed a whole month, it would cost you less than $3000 – and you would live in the West Village. The hotel has almost 350 rooms, and not one room is bigger than 200 sq.ft., if that. There are a number of regulars who come in, and who’s to blame them for wanting to? This is such a great new concept in the New York City hotel that there are more coming up. Take the Pod on E. 51st St.; in a city where space is the most expensive commodity you could imagine and where living standards are high. Manhattan could be the new Tokyo. When I heard that the British capsule hotel company Yotel was opening in Manhattan, I feared that maybe they were taking my new Tokyo idea a little too seriously. But they weren’t; they come up on West 42nd St. soon, they’ll have real rooms, albeit small ones. Some of these hotels have a few shared amenities like bathrooms; but they’re much better than youth hostels.

Boutique hotels have been around for about 25 years now; are these boutiques then? They could be, except that they’re less pretentious, and invest your money where it really counts. And if anything, these hotels are smaller than the boutique ones. New Yorkers live in tiny cramped homes too, and skip out to experience the town’s great entertainment whenever they are able. When anyone comes in from out of town to stay at these tiny new New York City hotels  they can probably feel like authentic New Yorkers themselves.

These hotels work for locals too; go to the Ace on West 29th, and you’ll seen such a vibrant nightlife of artistic people, you’d think it was a club or something. This hotel has such great bars and restaurants inside that it’s turned out to be quite a destination. The rooms at a New York City hotel of this kind usually have the air of a first-class airplane toilet (in a good way). Everything seems factory-made, elegant, and very, very efficient. The Jane somehow has an elegant look to it; some others, like the Pod, use extreme styling. Perhaps this is the way boutique hotels will go from now.

If you like to travel on a budget, and if you don’t like to compromise on some basic essentials, style being among them, traveling to New York City usually isn’t supposed to be a good idea. New York offers you great budget options (but be warned that hotel review websites find hundreds of cases of bug infestations among budget hotels in the city), and great fashionable luxury options (not a good idea unless you have pockets like Bill Gates), but never the twain shall meet. What kind of fashionably affordable options are there in a city like this where rooms go for about the highest in the country at about $250 on average? Why, you go for boutique hotels of course, the new middle ground.

The whole boutique hotel movement began around the time Barack Obama’s presidential campaign started; at first, it was barely a drop in the ocean – a couple of tiny cozy uber-fashionable hotels like the Pod and the Jane opened up with luxury offerings on a tiny tab. They were so successful that the hotel industry caught on to the trend, and went to town market with traveler friendly, New York style boutique hotels that had really cool architecture and great facilities, and a price tag that was barely above the average at about $200. Among boutique hotels, these are a new breed – they are the budget boutique hotels.

The whole movement with boutique hotels was always supposed to be about young hungry entrepreneurs with a vision in fashion. The new budget boutiques are anything but though; most of them are owned and run by international hotel chains like the Intercontinental. They’re just trying to draw in a special kind of fashion-conscious independent customer that they couldn’t have lured to a major hotel. Let’s look at what some of these hotels are like; for the most part, they have great service, the design of the rooms is thoughtful and hip, and the amenities they provide are all for the new generation, if they do go over the top little bit with the iPod docks. So without further ado, let’s look at a handful of the best of the lot.

Fashion 26 on West 26th actual almost succeeds in living up to its name. Everything about it seems new and exciting; get this, they have contests all the time for best-dressed guest; if you win, you get a free room upgrade. The fashion theme runs throughout. The housekeeping staff all wear little risqué French maid costumes, and the windows are framed so thatyou get a look into the showcases of fashionable clothing stores across the street. The service itself is pretty fantastic; they come in and turn down the bed before bedtime, leave you little notes about the weather, change the positions the pillows and so on. The food could do with a little improvement though.

Boutique hotels are all about the flourishes, the quirky touches here and there. Take the Strand for instance, on W. 37th St. In the men’s urinals, instead of those antiseptic cubes, they have ice cubes. The hotel itself is a great location with great views over the Empire State building. The rooms are large and fresh; but you don’t get the boutiquey coziness anywhere. The bathrooms are airy and kind of cold. There is an Art Deco theme going around, that doesn’t help all that much. They get it with the creative complimentary breakfast though, and the seafood restaurant is imaginative.

There are many others too – The Indigo, the Vibe, and the Distrikt among others. You snag a room in any of these places for about $200 a night, and they are a good deal. They usually seem eager for the opportunity, and that’s a feel has been missing for quite a while at any hotel.

Most of the people that travel to New York have some really distinct ideas with regards to exactly what they would like to see or do while they are in the city. We all know about the extraordinary shopping opportunities, active nightlife, and thrilling sporting events here, and numerous people travel to New York every year just to watch The Mets or Yankees game, or even to experience the club scene, or just to say they have been shopping at Barney’s. But there are several additional New York City attractions which are worth visiting – even if it means experiencing a little bit of culture along the way.

You will certainly be doing yourself a great disservice if you skip out on these types of cultural destinations. There are at least a couple places that are practically brimming with culture, and if you want to see something really distinct within New York as well as something that will be really memorable, these are the sites you will need to visit. Of all the New York City attractions, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has the opportunity to develop into one of the bright spots of your visit. I know exactly what you’re thinking, though. You’re thinking that it’s a “museum.” How exciting will a museum actually be? Aren’t the Knicks playing right now? I know there won’t be anybody crashing the boards at a “museum.”

The fact is that the American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s most important scientific as well as cultural institutions. This establishment has taken decades collecting, interpreting, and spreading facts concerning various human civilizations and the natural world. But all of that is merely the type of talk you might read on a brochure. None of this could really illustrate what it is like to actually be inside of this museum.

Regardless of whether you bring your entire family for a vacation or are getting in contact with your inner-child to be able to satisfy your curiosity and desire to learn something new, you’ll be astonished with everything from the large number of dinosaurs to the 94-foot-long blue whale hanging from the ceiling. Or, if you are looking for something a bit more… multimedia, in that case there are some planetarium shows as well as the Imax Theater. Oh, and don’t forget the additional opportunities for intellectual stimulation there, like the many exhibitions of human culture and also scientific discovery.

Simply bear in mind that the AMNH has been voted one of the top New York City attractions, and if you are really looking for some thing unforgettable, this must be the first stop.

The second stop ought to be the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA Museum). This particular institution is fostering imagination and also artistic interests for a very long time, not to mention it has been one of the most significant establishments in the world that focuses on modern or contemporary artwork. Modern art might not exactly be for all people, but this museum is home to many of the most original, unique, bizarre, and even astounding pieces that you can see worldwide. If you are interested in viewing painting, sculptures, photographs, or live displays, there will be things there which one might enjoy, as well as something here that might change the way you pay attention to fine art. As you can see, there are a lot of New York City attractions that it can be simple to overlook some of these simple treasures. This is especially real when time is restricted. You should visit all the common destinations – visit the top of the Empire State Building, go to Central Park, and visit the Statue of Liberty – but do not cheat yourself out of a little culture on the way. It’s simple to overlook which team won the baseball game that day, or even what audio was played at the dance clubs, but these kinds of cultural, unique experiences tend to be the sort of thing that you will remember for countless decades into the future.