How To Be A Tourist In Your Own City

Trying to make the most of our last weeks in New York City, we’re mastering the art of stay-cation tourism.

T-minus three weeks until we officially move out of New York City. Between packing up our studio and saying goodbye to friends, we’re busy completing our NYC Bucket List. To do this, we’re devoting whole weekends and spare evenings to being tourists at home — and getting pretty good at it too! Read on for our insider tips for sightseeing in your own city and five OTHER things to do in New York.

Stay-cation Tourist Tips

1. Start your day like the local that you are: visit your secret favorite coffee shop or seek out that little-known café your co-workers are always raving about. We’ve said it before, but our favorite spot in Harlem is Astor Row Cafe or, if you’re in Brooklyn, we recommend visiting Coffee Rx (formerly The Coffee Lab) in Bay Ridge.
2. Grab breakfast at the that upscale neighborhood joint you’ve been meaning to try, but never had a reason to visit. Treat yourself, you’re on stay-cation after all!
   

   Bacon bacon bacon

   

   Tasteful wrappings

   

   Tasty pastry

   This past weekend, we made our way over to Danny Meyer’s new casual dining breakfast counter, Daily Provisions, which is part of the Union Square Hospitality Group. The sandwiches were spot on, but the pastries were the real show stoppers. Brian tried eating my maple cruller out my hand, while I snatched bites of his vanilla orange kouign amann. I almost punched him when he went for a second bite. Fool.

3. If you can get your meal to go, why not eat al fresco and enjoy more city life! Avoid the hoards of pigeons and real tourists by finding a shady bench in a smaller park. Instead of Union Square Park or Madison Square Park, head over to Stuyvesant Square just north of 14th Street. Or, if you’re uptown in Manhattan, head north of Central Park for Morningside Park or Marcus Garvey Park, both in Harlem.
4. Once you are fueled up, we recommend hitting that far away destination first. There is a reason it’s been sitting on your list — you just don’t have time to go ALL the way over there — but now is the time! For Brian and I, this perennial site of avoidance was Coney Island, way the heck down at the bottom of Brooklyn. Coming from Harlem, it was a long haul journey, but we broke it up by stopping downtown for breakfast in the park, and then plowed on.
   

   An eerily deserted Coney Island boardwalk on a cold Saturday in May

   I am so pleased we made the journey, even though it was a cold Saturday and too early in the season to enjoy sunbathing. We walked along the beach, watched a few brave souls clamber up to the Cyclone roller coaster, bought “old time-y” gummy snakes at William’s Candy Shop, and ate the requisite Nathan’s hot dog (and experienced the requisite heartburn).

5. Enjoy a drink at the local watering hole. In our opinion, no “cation” of any sort is complete without some casual day drinking to beat the midday touring slump. To combat this, we paid a visit to one of many local watering holes: Coney Island Brewing Company. A generously-poured flight of four beer samples will only set your back $8.
   

   Lovely beer flight at Coney Island Brewing Co.

   Aside from the frequent tours of the brewery, the staff and locals will keep you entertained with stories and party packs of contraband chips. More importantly, the beer was refreshing, flavorful, and diverse. Our particular favorite brews were the Mermaid Pilsner (a Coney Island staple), the Gallivanting Wit (for Belgian beer lovers), and the exceedingly smooth Overpass IPA.

   

   Enjoying a spot of day drinking

6. Feeling good? Let’s push on to our next site. Enjoy your buzz and settle back into the subway car or the bus to the next item on your itinerary. To fight travel fatigue, pull out some crossword puzzles or silly BuzzFeed quizzes to pass the time (“How many kids you will have based on your potato preferences?”). At this point, it’s easy to say “Let’s just go home and take a nap”. But, DON’T do it – future you will thank you for your perseverance.  For us, this fatigue point happened during a rather nauseating shuttle bus service when the MTA unexpectedly shut down the F train service we needed to reach Roosevelt Island, in the East River.
7. Squeezing in one more activity – worth it, right? Of course it is. There is a reason these places are tourist attractions and, if you’ve lived in your city long enough, you’ve already seen all the crowded, hyped up attractions. So, what remains now are the calmer (read: cleaner) attractions that are frequented by locals like yourself.
   

   Walkway leading to Four Freedoms Park

   If you reside in NYC, we recommend traveling out to Roosevelt Island this summer to see FDR’s Four Freedoms Park which juts out into the East River with peacefully shaded benches and views of the city. When you’re done, trying heading home a different way than you normally would and walk as much of it was you can. You never know what hidden gems you might find along the way.

8. Time to make dinner plans – shall we dine in or eat out? One of the many joys of stay-cationing is that you can have dinner in your pajamas, while still treating yourself to holiday living. Sure, if you still have the energy and funds to eat out after touring around all day, by all means! Hit that trendy neighborhood you’ve been meaning to visit for ages — the [insert Ethnic cuisine here] food scene is supposed to be fantastic! However, if you’re exhausted from, for example, walking from East 59th Street to West 98th Street via Central Park, then you may want to round off your carefree day with a Netflix binge and some takeout. This is a great time to use one of the many coupon codes you see on the subway to get discounted delivery. And, hey, if it’s 20% off the food, it’s 20% off the calories, right? We concluded our day by ordering Delhi Masala on Yelp’s Eat24 app (awesome decision) and watching Bridget Jones’ Baby (horrible mistake, but better than Rosemary’s Baby and certainly superior to Million Dollar Baby).

Five Other Things To Do in New York City

1. Get that million dollar skyline shot from the Roosevelt Island tram. Grab the tram from E 59th Street and 2nd Ave to Roosevelt Island and back for panoramic views of Manhattan and Queens overlooking the East River. All it will cost you is one subway fare.
   

   That will be a million dollars, please.

2. Learn something new everyday. Take a free intro improv class from Magnet Theater. Learn how to contour your cheekbones with a free class at Sephora. Find a friend to take you along to one of the many interesting fitness classes that keeps this city so strong (sidebar: SoulCycle is an anthropologists dream). Use MeetUp to take Scottish country dancing lessons. If you want to learn, New York will teach you.
3. Experience the legendary Met Opera…for only $25. That’s right, while some people blow a fortune on tickets to the Metropolitan Opera, speedy clickers can score $25 rush tickets for day of performances. These are the unsold premium seats so you can really luck out!
4. Find your ancestors at the National Archives. Lose an afternoon delving through the National Archives’ free internet collections which are open to the public down by Wall Street.  Bonus, when you’re done learning that your great-great-grandmother was a gold-digging biggot, you’re already at the National Museum of the American Indian.
5. Pass on Little Italy in Manhattan and check out Little Italy in The Bronx. Centered around Arthur Avenue near Fordham, this neighborhood is bursting at the seams with Italian restaurants, markets, bakeries, and raw oyster street stalls! Better yet, this place isn’t mobbed by tourists like it’s counterpart downtown.
   

   Arancini and Sicilian polenta and chick pea fritters from Emilia’s on Arthur Ave

I hope our hard won tips serve you well. My only regret is that I learned so much too late. C’est la vie.

Let me know how you get on with stay-cationing, in New York and beyond!

-Sophie