This Memorial Day weekend Governors Island reopens for the season. It's truly my favorite summer destination in NYC. Whenever I go I think to myself, if they built condos here, I would totally want to buy one. (Thankfully, the island is considered a national monument, so not even Trump can get his hands on this real estate!)

This 172-acre oasis was once home to the U.S. Army and Coast Guard, and is full of quaint 19th-century houses, grassy hills and traffic-free bike paths. It's just a seven-minute ferry ride from lower Manhattan, but if you stand in a spot where the city skyline is out of view, you feel as if you've been transported to 1800s New England. In addition to being a fantastic place for families to relax and explore, the isle hosts lots of cool festivals and activities throughout the season, most of which are FREE. The ferry ride there is FREE, too.

For 2013, all of the big kid attractions will be back, including the Opening Weekend Family Festival, the Figment arts fest when the mini-golf course and Interactive Sculpture Garden debut, and the Children's Museum of the Arts Free Island Outpost. But there are also some really exciting new additions, notably a French festival of vintage carnival rides and carousels in July! Read on for the scoop on the very best things to do on Governors Island with kids this season.

Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer. And while there are plenty of fun things to do in NYC—beaches, Governors Island, Coney Island and Victorian Gardens Amusement Park all open for the season—the three-day vacation is a great time to skip town and enjoy a quick getaway. After all, you have three more months to experience all the summer fun the city has to offer.

We've rounded up five cool family destinations that are all two hours or less by car from midtown Manhattan. From farm fun to creative festivals to the revamped Crayola Experience, here are five great day trips for NYC families this Memorial Day weekend. You can find more travel inspiration in our Family Day Trips and Weekend Getaways Guide.

We're still basking in a Mother's Day afterglow (that's three generations of my family in the photo) but we're also counting down to Memorial Day weekend. Our Travel site rounded up some excellent getaway deals for the upcoming holiday weekend including destinations that are a short drive from NYC. Our regional sites are full of cool spring day trip ideas like the Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, New Jersey, the USS Nautilus and Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut or pick-your-own strawberry farms throughout the Garden State. If you decide to make it a Memorial Day weekend staycation, there's certainly plenty to do in town like the opening day family festival on Governors Island, the debut of the Dinosaur Safari ride at the Bronx Zoo and the start of the Coney Island season.

There's still time to subscribe to our Hamptons and North Fork newsletter and be automatically entered to win fun prizes. We also have another great giveaway going on: Enter to win a week of Summer Adventure Camp: City Edition run by NY City Explorers.

Wish you could enjoy all of our Mommy Poppins recommendations when you're on the go? Well, soon there'll be an app for that. We're readying our Mommy Poppins App for launch but we need your help. We started an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign so that we can raise enough money to make the app free to all. Contribute to our goal and you'll snag some cool swag and, of course, get the benefit of using the app once it debuts in June. We believe that Mommy Poppins is more than just a website, it's a community. This app is a way for us all to collaborate on something really cool.

Here's what else we covered on our NYC site this week: