Class B RV Travel to New York City (Should You RV in NYC)

Parallel parking a 23-foot Sprinter van at Central Park in New York City. Good idea or bad idea? We're getting close. Hey what's up it's Christine and Aaron and sorry about that dramatic intro. Christine actually did a pretty good job parallel parking. She did not hit a tree or anything crazy like that. But we just came from New York City and we drove our Sprinter van which is a 2014 Airstream Interstate and we drove parked and spent two three days in New York City and it's way different than any other city and I think everybody knows that but until you go there it's pretty crazy. We're just going to cover tunnels rules and regulations and parking in this video and some of the tips that we've learned in our short experience there. So the driving itself wasn't so bad and we took the Holland Tunnel to get in from New Jersey and that was backed up. It was a lot of cars but we got our way in. We got into the city and right away we were quickly blasted with some citywide signs that they had in place for the city like 25 miles an hour and citywide and no right turns on red citywide citywide. So right away I was like oh great okay I know what I can't do. Obviously the streets are crowded people are honking lots of honking you don't know who's honking at who or what the honks are for some of the time and it's just fun. I had fun with it. And now we're sitting in traffic with the horns via honking. Everybody's honking. I don't know who's honking at who. Nobody's moving. What was that all about? Did you honk in there? Yes because people were trying to sneak in. I was keeping it tight. The biggest thing for us in our vehicle you know we have to drive slow. We have to turn slow. We have to take potholes very slow and there is a lot of potholes there. The roads are bad. That was the biggest thing for us was the sewer caps in the road and the potholes in the road where you just got to creep through them but it was fine and it worked fine. Our van wasn't an issue in terms of size or maneuvering. It was just fine to maneuver around. Yeah but if you have a bigger rv a class a or a class c or a b plus that's wider than a regular sprinter or pro master it would be very tricky I think to navigate especially if you're a newer driver or just not familiar with driving in cities like that. The other part that was kind of nerve-wracking for driving is not so much the roads being narrow but when you had a narrow road with a big concrete wall next to it. I kind of got a little seized up feeling by having something right on the wall but you just get used to it. You know our van is narrow. It's not any wider than a regular vehicle so we weren't put into any position that a regular car wouldn't be in. It just felt more constricted because of the extra height and the tiny bit of extra length. I was just careful to hug those walls. So that was it for driving. Well bridges there's some low bridges in Central Park as you cut across and I mean really low like nine foot one I think was the the lowest. So our sprinter van's nine foot eight yeah six or eight. That's a good point. That was really the only area that we couldn't take our van. The only times that we couldn't drive on a specific road were those cut throughs to get from West Central Park to East Central Park vice versa and mostly in the center of the park. So as you go on the upper side of the park we could go through some of those cut throughs but the ones in the middle in the center were too short for us to go through. Yeah so you have to drive around. So we just wanted to cover a few of the points that that stuck out to us and we wrote a blog on this on our website IreneIronFitness.com so we'll link that all in the video. But one of the big things was that tunnel goes under the the Hudson River and the biggest thing with that is propane. It says propane restricted like everywhere propane restricted and it was really hard to gauge if that's talking about commercial use or RV use. So we looked up some of the laws and the New York New Jersey Port Authority has two manuals on it. The green manual and the red manual. We'll link them both. It's a manual. Really good bedtime reads. Yeah it's literally a manual you're reading so it's very difficult but from what I could tell it appeared that there's like a 210 pound propane variance or limitation for an RV to go through. So they want to restrict a lot of commercial uses but I tried to research that. I could not find any specific information on is it allowed is it not allowed. So the safe way is to go over the George Washington Bridge on the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge. Also with the tunnels it's important to be aware that there are fees to get into Manhattan but there's not fees to exit. So it's free to go back into New Jersey and the fees are various. It depends on what type of a vehicle you're driving. Depends on how many wheels it has. How many passengers it holds. There's an entire matrix chart that we have linked in our blog. If you want to see where you might fall on that chart go in and take a look. I think the lowest is $15 and then the highest is $126 and up. Yeah it's not your regular toll. This is not like $3 or $6. We got charged $24. $29. It was an odd charge. It's a $29. Well it is our largest toll that we've ever paid so we were pretty blown away. We kind of thought back a little bit you know because sometimes we get charged extra. We have dual rear wheels. Sometimes they'll say you got dual axles or it just seems like we get charged. We have been overcharged before. Yeah absolutely. So we were charged as a minibus which is kind of like the sprinter van limos or passenger vehicles that they have. So it's a good thing we got charged less. It looks like you can get charged quite a bit more especially if you're you know you got a big truck and you're towing hauling or if you got a big class a motorhome or something with a bunch of axles. It's a lot to get into. Yeah but that brings up a point where would you even want to bring in you know a trailer with a truck that you're towing a big trailer? Probably not. In our experience we found the class b to be awesome. It was perfect. We got into the city and we managed to even spend a night there to avoid the additional tolls to go in and out. And if you were to have a big class a or class c could you drive it in? Would you want to drive it in? Where would you park that thing and how would you get it around? Like that's an entirely different beast than a class b. In our opinion the b absolutely all day long bring it in you won't have an issue. Parking, which we can talk about next, it's hit or miss for the streets. You know like any city if you're trying to get parking on a street you might have to make a few loops and wait for some turnover to get a parking spot that opens up. Especially if you're a couple feet longer like we are where you just need a little bit extra space than a traditional spot. But it definitely happens and we got lucky on west central park. Two days we got lucky where we got free parking and we know somebody that's was there right after us that ended up paying $60 just to park their you know full-size four-door pickup truck. So we found parking at west central and that was pretty pretty impressive right in front of central park. Yeah and that's where you witnessed my very first parallel parking experience which in the van not your very first ever. Oh yeah in the van but we were blown away because we weren't expecting the free parking on the west central park and you can't even park overnight there. We chose not to park overnight there just because of the sheer volume and noise on that road there's constantly sirens going back and forth. It wouldn't have been a good night's sleep so we preferred to be off of that major road and that's the west side of central park which is called west central park right yeah and from 62nd ave i think all the way up to like 111th or 120th we'll verify that and link that but that's all free parking on both sides of the road there um so if you can find that and snag a spot why not i mean you're already paying a ton to get there and you're already paying a ton uh to park and you're already paying a ton to eat and you know new york city isn't cheap we're also going to do a video on camping in new york city and two recommendations for camping right outside of the city if you have a bigger rig that you can't quite get in and sleep on the the streets like some of the smaller rigs yeah so one thing back to the parking again is when you're on the streets just pay very close attention to the signs for that specific street because the rules are going to vary from street to street and there's things in new york city like street cleaning the street cleaning was very specific different on different streets but it was like mondays and tuesdays 12 to noon or it was like two hour blocks so basically what that meant was you couldn't just park your car there all day and it was during the the weekdays like monday through friday it might have been 8 a.m to 10 p.m so everyone's obviously different with their schedule but the street cleaning was a big deal because that restricts you from parking like we did on the weekend so that's a little tip there if you come in on saturday and sunday parking is way different than monday to friday yeah we got lucky because we were there on a weekend and we found a street that had free parking it wasn't metered it wasn't spaced off so we found a spot right on the end of the road where we fit like a glove and we could leave our our van there parked during the day while we went and roamed around we could get to and from our van as we wanted to so when we needed a little break or we want to come back and cook a meal or put our feet up we could get some relief and relaxations and then go hit the street again and it was perfect and that's what we love about having our class b in the cities in the major metro areas where we can bring this here and we can sleep and have everything that we need and that's what being in a class b is all about that's a fun way to visit a city you're like you're basically a resident of that city for two days and you're enjoying all the tourism that they have and all the beauty and all the fun and it is just a great way to see the big cities in the united states awesome yeah so the two specific spots that we got free parking um which was all weekend long was on the west side of central park and also we were off of 15th street and eighth avenue i think it was um but that's on like the side residential right next to chelsea market yeah it's kind of residential slash commercial it's a little blend but driving at night is also a whole another situation we did quite a bit of night driving and we got some footage we'll show you a little bit of that just because it's kind of fun seeing time square yeah at night all lit up driving through it i mean that's insane what a fun uh fun experience but what did you think about driving while driving she does all the driving by the way i do all the relaxing while driving there's all sorts of distractions like carriages horses people riding those bicycles all the tourist instagrammers instagrammers you gotta watch out for dog walkers runners cute puppies there's all sorts of things on the road that you need to pay attention to and as i mentioned of course those potholes and all the dips and stuff in the road so for me i didn't like driving at night it's different when you're like going through time square and it's lit up and you're like in a tanning booth because of all the lights that are blasting but if you're especially leaving when we went on friday night to leave manhattan we went to brooklyn and getting off of manhattan was a little nerve-wracking when it was dark just because i'm unfamiliar with all the bumps in the road i'm unfamiliar with the tight turns and that was really the only part that i was a little uncomfortable and to get off of those tight narrow ways when it was dark and i couldn't see was a big relief for me so i don't like driving at night and then it's just magnified like all the reasons you don't like driving at night it's magnified in new york city so overall it's not a bad thing it's just a little bit more stressful than when it's daylight yeah new york city has like eight and a half million people it's insane the experience is great if you've never been in new york city i highly recommend you go check it out not necessarily drive into it but there's plenty of ways to visit new york city and experience what it has to offer we absolutely fell in love with it and would love to spend more time there and are excited to go back yes and now we know where to park new york city is electric it's just it's energetic that i think that's why i liked it so much there was so you can't match the energy level yeah that's what brings a city alive city is alive the people that live there and the people that are visiting there and it was just insane it was i mean just walking through crosswalks and i had such a fun experience doing that it was good you can probably tell that we really like new york city and we'll be back we'll be back so we hope these tips help you on your journey to go to new york city what to be prepared for and if you have your class brv and you're contemplating bringing it in we say do it if you're comfortable driving absolutely do it for sure and uh once again we're aaron and christine from irene iron fitness we run um an online fitness and nutrition coaching business on the road and christine is a nasum certified personal trainer and i kind of run the website and the business side and training partner and and all that fun stuff and uh we're digging it so far so it's allowing us to enjoy um the country like this and see all these places that we've never seen before and thanks for watching if you like the content please subscribe and we'll see you next week see you next time oh now around cow like a big city it's crazy friday afternoon at 3 30 this is called it's pretty cool we don't see any other rvs down here you know one thing i've noticed so far out of my little two-inch viewfinder all of the crosswalks are very prominently painted and kept up which makes sense because you're in new york city there's a lot of people just can't do it never does