Elevate Your Next Travel Experience in New York with These Suggestions
Travelling is experiential. Some people say there is a right way to travel. Others have a different view of it all. What matters for your next travel experience is that you make it your own. After all, you are the one going on a trip. Go ahead and peruse the ideas below and incorporate one, two, or all of the ideas into your adventure to make it your own.
Protect Your Downtime
Instead of packing your travel schedule with back-to-back activities and must-see sites, add some much-needed downtime. Just like a child needs a nap every afternoon, you, too, need a break each day. Find a nice path or park near your hotel to take a short (or long) walk every morning or afternoon. Decompress while taking in the local colour. Just as important is getting sound, restful sleep each evening. Find a quality SoHo hotel where you can take your shoes off, put up your feet, and relax away from the hustle and bustle in the city around you. Taking steps to avoid returning home just as frazzled and stressed as when you left will go a long way toward improving your mental health and stress levels.
Eat Where the Locals Eat
The locals might occasionally frequent touristy restaurants to enjoy the food and atmosphere, but they mostly stick with local eating establishments, like the Dominique Ansel Bakery, which is famous for inventing the Cronut. These tend to be less expensive, less crowded, and considerably more delicious from start to finish. Add the opportunity to meet people who actually live in your host city instead of other fellow travellers (while there is nothing wrong with that, of course), and you have a recipe for the perfect meal. Ask them about their city, what they like to do for fun, and how they spend their leisure time. You might get some amazing recommendations that no guidebook has and a memorable experience like no other.
Look for Local Hidden Treasures
If you heeded the above suggestion, you might already know where some local hidden treasures are located – because the locals told you. Otherwise, get off the beaten path when you are out sightseeing. Always keep safety at the forefront of your mind and avoid any questionable areas. Sometimes, a right turn down a well-lit and crowded street corridor instead of going straight on to your destination will prove fruitful. You may happen upon a local food bazaar or art installation that brings an earthy scent to the concrete jungle that you would never have found otherwise. Instead of staying within the confines of your city, look further afield and explore the quaint, smaller boroughs or towns that abound around it.
Leave Your Work at Work
If you have put in a time off request at work, then everyone should know that you will not be available when you are on vacation. Even so, go ahead and let your supervisor and co-workers know exactly which dates you will be unavailable. Take it a step further by changing your outgoing message and OOO or out of office response email to reflect that timeframe. Be sure to add the contact information of whoever will be handling your duties and responsibilities while you are out. That way, you will not return to a pile of work that someone else could have easily handled in your absence. Go ahead and turn off work communications and make an actionable decision not to check work channels while away. Not even on the aeroplane.
Prioritise Experiences Over Purchases
Regardless of your travel budget or what is currently in your bank account, there is something to be said about foregoing a shopping spree on vacation in favour of having wonderful experiences. Instead of spending precious time during your travels to seek out tchotchkes for yourself and everyone else back home, and then having to pack and carry them all back, rethink how you spend your time. Of course, an I Love NY t-shirt or tote bag might be a requirement. Look for events and create moments you can commit to memory. Take photos and videos instead of fridge magnets and snow globes. Be in the moment and take a tour of a memorable heritage site instead of just walking through quickly and picking up something in the gift shop.
See the Touristy Sites, Too
Of course, if anyone suggests you avoid the must-see tourist sites, or tourist traps, as they say, you should rethink their advice. When in Rome, as they say. You cannot go to New York City without seeing the Statue of Liberty, for example. Every major destination city will have a requisite checklist of things to do, see, and experience. You should take part in these things. They are iconic for a reason. Try to have a balance between doing everything the guidebook recommends and creating a different kind of vacation. Mixing a little bit of everything into your trip will make it memorable for all the right reasons.
Practice Patience
If you are a charged-up kind of person and are short on patience, do yourself a big favour and begin to learn how to become less impatient. There is no perfect recipe for how to do this, and it will differ for each person, but being angry and frustrated on vacation will not do much to make your trip a great one. When someone bumps you on the street, take a breath. Keep going. People make mistakes. If your food is delayed at the restaurant, people watch with your travel partners and try to guess where other diners are from. Unless you have tickets to a Broadway show, relax. However, if you do have tickets, let your server know as soon as you are seated so they can take care of your table quickly.
Your next trip to NYC can be the best one yet. All you need to do is rethink your travel priorities. Find local gems, stay in an amazingly comfortable and well-appointed hotel in a central location, and explore the area. Stop by a few touristy areas, just because they are interesting, and then spend some time eating delicious food before finding your way back to the hotel for some relaxation.
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