Travel notes on United States

General

All the internet boxes from xfinity, one of the main ISP, have an open Wi-Fi hotspot. You can pay, or have a 30 minutes complimentary session upon signing up. Changing MAC address will let you have another complimentary session.
Banks in the US will charge you a fee if you want to withdraw money with your european card. This fee is about 3$ (whatever the amount you withdraw) and is charged by the US bank, so your bank cannot waive it with specific options you might take. Some banks however do not charge this fee. See below for more infos.

The fee to withdraw money is about 3$, no matter the amount you withdraw. There are some exceptions I could find, listed below.

With an LCL account, the following banks did not charge me the 3$ fee:

With an LCL account, the following banks did charge me with the 3$ fee:

MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) provides rails transportation service to Connecticut (MetroNorth), Long Island (LIRR, Long Island RailRoad) and Staten Island. You can buy tickets either at the booth or the vending machines, as well as 10 tickets (with about 10% discount). Note that if you have a foreign credit card, you will not be able to pay more than 50$ with it (then preventing you from buying most of the 10 tickets sets).

Customs at JFK have very long queues, especially if this is your first visit with an ESTA. Expect to wait at least one hour (my personal max was three hours) between the moment you leave the plane and the moment you can actually leave the airpor.
As a consequence, your luggage will likely arrive way ahead of you. Having a lock on your checked luggage seems to really be a necessity if it is going to wait for you for about one hour on the carousel.
There is free Wi-Fi access for 30 minutes. You have to pay if you want a longer access. Changing MAC address will give you another complimentary session.

Some parts of the city can be really sketchy. Best places to stay are close to Yale University campus, Downtown, Wooster Square and East Rock (where basically all grad students live). Close to the Yale hospital is not that good. Neither are Dwight and Dixwell.
Yale shuttle lines are free of charge for everyone, no need to actually be part of Yale community to take it.