Look, every trip to New York is supposed to change you. That’s what the brochures say, anyway. What they don’t tell you is that the real city—the one that gets under your skin—has nothing to do with checking boxes on some Instagram influencer’s bucket list.
On my first visit here, I was expecting Friends. Maybe a little Sex and the City. What I got was something rawer, more honest, and infinitely more interesting. New York doesn’t perform for you. It just is. And if you’re paying attention, it’ll give you moments that stick to your ribs long after you’ve left.
Here are ten of mine. Not the “must-sees.” The must-feels.
1. Central Park: Where Normal Doesn’t Exist
Central Park is where I learned that New Yorkers don’t go to parks—they live in them. You’ve got roller skaters moving to Chic like it’s 1978, couples in rowboats doing their best Woody Allen impression, wedding photographers staging shots under Bethesda Terrace. It’s all happening at once, and nobody thinks it’s weird.
Summer afternoons at Turtle Pond near Belvedere Castle? That’s where locals spread out blankets and pretend, for a few hours, that eight million people aren’t crammed onto this island. It’s communal. It’s strange. It’s perfect. This is also the spot selected by my Alma Mater Columbia University Toastmasters – once the largest Toastmasters group in America and one of the largest in the world!
2. Brooklyn Bridge at Sunset: The Cliché That Earns It
Yeah, yeah, walking the Brooklyn Bridge is tourist 101. But here’s the thing: some clichés exist for a reason. I stopped halfway across one evening, surrounded by strangers all doing the exact same thing—mouths open, phones out, watching Manhattan ignite behind us.
Nobody apologized for blocking the path. Nobody should have. Some moments demand you stop and pay attention.
3. The Halal Guys: A $10 Religious Experience
The Halal Guys cart on 6th Avenue outside the Hilton isn’t food. It’s a pilgrimage. The line stretches around the block, and you stand there like an idiot because you heard someone say it’s worth it.
Then you get your chicken over rice. The smoky meat. The yellow rice soaking up that mysterious white sauce—part mayo, part magic, part “please don’t ask questions.” I sat on a bench and ate it with the reverence it deserved. Under ten bucks. Better than most restaurants charging ten times that.
This is why people move here.
4. The New York Public Library: Silence as Sacrament
Walking into the New York Public Library made me shut up. Not easy to do. The marble halls, the hushed footsteps, the sense that important things happened here and still do—it’s church for people who worship ideas.
I half-expected Carrie Bradshaw to be there, typing furiously. Instead, I found something better: the realization that some spaces still demand your respect. And in a city that never stops screaming at you, that silence feels like oxygen.
5. Tao Downtown: Theater You Can Eat
Tao Downtown at the Dream Hotel is ridiculous. A sixty-foot stone Buddha watching you eat. Moody lighting that makes everyone look like they’re in a Wong Kar-wai film. Plates that arrive looking like edible art installations. Tao is New York City’s answer to Paris’ Buddha Bar. The moment you walk in you will feel a similar vibe and will see aspects of how the Tao Group were inspired by Buddha Bar.
It’s absurd. It’s over-the-top. And I loved every goddamn second of it. Because sometimes you don’t want authenticity—you want spectacle. You want to be reminded that dining can be more than fuel. It can be an event. A memory. A story you’ll tell badly at parties.
6. Levain Bakery: When a Cookie Becomes a Problem
The Levain Bakery chocolate chip cookie isn’t a cookie. It’s a commitment. Baseball-sized, warm, gooey, structurally unsound. You bite in and chocolate runs down your hands and you don’t care because you’ve just experienced what decadence actually means.
People line up for these. Willingly. And they’re not wrong. This is what happens when someone decides to take a simple pleasure and push it to its logical extreme.
7. Staten Island Ferry: The City’s Greatest Freebie
The Staten Island Ferry is New York’s dirty little secret. Free. Views of the Statue of Liberty. The Manhattan skyline in all its obscene glory. And the best part? Commuters sitting there, coffee in hand, completely indifferent to the show happening outside the windows.
I stood at the railing like the tourist I was, wind messing up my hair, watching Lady Liberty get closer. Around me, regulars barely looked up. That’s New York in a nutshell: your extraordinary is their Tuesday morning.
8. Kati Roll Company: Sidewalk Perfection
I grabbed a spicy chicken kati roll from Kati Roll Company on a rainy afternoon. Warm, flaky paratha wrapped around fiery chicken. Ate it standing on the sidewalk, rain coming down, umbrellas streaming past in a blur.
That’s the thing about New York—sometimes the best meals happen while you’re standing in the rain with nowhere to sit. You don’t need white tablecloths. You need good food and the willingness to eat it wherever the city allows.
9. Nougatine by Jean-Georges: When Food Makes You Rethink Everything
Lunch at Nougatine did something to me. A tuna tartare that was so perfectly balanced, so thoughtfully composed, that it made me question every meal I’d eaten before it. Refined without being precious. Elegant without being stuffy.
It’s what good food does—it resets your baseline. It makes you realize how much mediocrity you’ve been accepting.
10. Via Quadronno: Hot Chocolate and Hidden Worlds
One summer afternoon—yes, summer, stay with me—I met a friend at Via Quadronno. She’d insisted. “Trust me,” she said. We ordered hot chocolate.
Thick. Velvety. The kind of drink that demands you slow down and pay attention. We sat in that tiny Italian café, surrounded by politicians, actors, TV personalities pretending they weren’t famous, all of us united by the simple act of drinking something that tasted like childhood and sophistication had a baby.
Sometimes luxury isn’t about expense. It’s about knowing where to find the good stuff.