Wanderlust World Wanderlust World Poughkeepsie is about 90 minutes outside of Manhattan, the heart of New York City. If you want to take a tour from Poughkeepsie, its best to contact any local travel agency in the mid-Hudson area, or one that specializes in personalized service, since all the New York City tours really operate in the city and not upstate. A representative from My Kind of Town New York personalized tours explained to this author that you pay extra for the transportation into New York using any tour service like this; the local tour operators take it from there.
Transportation into the city is easy. You might not want to drive there, even though it is off the Interstate 9, because you might not be able to navigate New York's streets easily. So you can take the Hudson Line of the Metro North train into Grand Central from Poughkeepsie without changing trains. You can also get to Penn Station using Amtrak from Poughkeepsie.The train ride will take close to two hours one way, so plan your time accordingly. Penn Station is not a bad place to start, since it is about two city blocks form Madison Square Garden, one of the stops on the hop-on-hop-off bus tours.
Once in Manhattan, there are a variety of different options for day tours on your own, if you do not want to to pay for a personalized tour. You can take hop-on-hop-off bus tours as mentioned above. Contact the tour operator in advance to find out where the tour stops are so you can plan where to best arrive. There are typically multiple drop-off spots for hop-on-hop-off tours, and they almost all have recorded information about each of the stops you can listen to while on the bus. At each stop, you can spend as much time as you want. All of the typical New York stops are included, such as Times Square, the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and now they have included "Ground Zero," the site of where the World Trade Center once stood.
There are also walking tours, dining tours, and harbor tours of New York City, all designed to give you a one-of-a kind, one-day glimpse of the fabulous city. If you feel more adventurous, you can also book a helicopter tour over the city.
Since you will be upstate in Poughkeepsie, don't abandon the idea of seeing that part of New York. There are many things to see and do in the Hudson River Valley. Right off Interstate 9 you can drive or take the Metro North train to Hyde Park and see the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and have lunch or dinner at the Culinary Institute of America. Reservations are required for the latter, typically months in advance. Other points of interest are the military academy West Point; Tarrytown, home of the Headless Horseman from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and the Vanderbilt Estate.