A Tale of Two Subways | My First Solo Trip to NYC
Last year, I took my first solo vacation to New York City. More or less on a whim, I booked an Airbnb in Brooklyn and bought my plane tickets in February for a trip in March. I was a bit nervous about getting everything together, but excited to become my own type of tourist.
Pre-Planning
I didn’t really budget for this trip, which probably would have been helpful. But I did pre-pay for most of my activities and my accommodations. I went on two AirBnB experiences: “Raise a Glass to Prohibition,” a bar crawl ($35); and a “Haitian Tea Party in Brooklyn” ($30). I also spoke with one of my sorors, who’d taken a solo trip to NYC about a year prior. She advised me to buy a CityPass. I purchased a classic CityPass which included admission to The Empire State Building, American Museum of Natural History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Top of the Rock Observation Deck or the Guggenheim Museum, the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island or Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises, and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum or Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum ($127).
In retrospect, I wish I’d purchased the less expensive C3 Pass which allows the ticket holder admission to three of the nine available attractions ($80). I just didn’t have enough time during my four days in New York to go to all six attractions, nor was I ever interested in the 9/11 Memorial & Museum or the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Purchasing the C3 would have been a more practical and cost-effective purchase. I also elected to drive myself to the airport and pre-pay for parking using the SpotHero app ($30).
Lastly, given that I occasionally struggle to navigate Houston, I downloaded the Citymapper app, which includes prices, routes, and wait times for all forms of public transportation, Uber, and Lyft. While in the city, it worked like a charm! I only have two critiques—the first is that Citymapper doesn’t seem to know when/if a certain train isn’t running due to repairs, which caused me a considerable amount of frustration after my speakeasy tour my second night; secondly, if you’re phone loses signal—as phones often do when taken underground or in an elevator—Citymapper will not update your location. This isn’t really that big a deal considering it outlines the entire route and you can flip through each step. Still, as someone who’d never taken a subway before, there were a few times where I got confused about switching platforms.
Day 1: Flatbush with Familiar People
I landed at LaGuardia Airport and took a Lyft to my AirBnB in Brooklyn ($22). I rented a small room in the back of a warm, cozy brownstone in Bed-Stuy. Check-in was easy, and my host was super communicative. I barely had time to settle in when my younger cousins, who happened to be in town visiting their grandmother the same week, called to inquire about my plans for the night. Their grandmother had grown up in Bed-Stuy and wanted to show them around the neighborhood, so we made plans to meet up. We ended up eating dinner at Mango Seed in Flatbush where I had oxy tails for the first time! Afterward, I returned to my AirBnB where I planned out my agenda for the next day before going to bed.
Day 2: Art, History, and Booze!
From left to right: Me, beaming, in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Slices of margarita and chicken Parmesan pizza from Marinara Pizza; and the Intime and Antoniette from Flute Bar & Lounge.
I woke up around 9 a.m. Thursday morning and did my makeup while listening to Solange, and I stopped by the nearby Burly Coffee for breakfast before heading to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I purchased a MetroCard, loaded it with $20, and took off.
I regret that I did not research and plan my visit to the Met before arriving. I spent my first 20 to 30 minutes there roaming around aimlessly, trying to decide which exhibits I should visit.
Eventually, I found my bearings, checked my coat, and charted my path. After discovering there was a 1 p.m. Ancestors, Spirits and Deities tour in the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas hall, I decided to explore the Egyptian Art hall. It was amazing. Here are the artifacts I found especially interesting:
The hall where they’ve laid out the entire Book of the Dead of the Priest of Horus, especially the scroll that explains The Judgement before Osiris wherein the heart of the deceased is weighed against an ostrich plume.
The statues of the goddess Sekhmet
The Temple of Dendur for Nubia, Dendur. They’ve installed a portion of the temple inside a wing of the museum.
After spending about an hour in there, I also wandered through the American and Medieval Art wings then quickly visited the Met Store before reporting to the Great Hall for my tour. As much as I was looking forward to it, the Ancestors, Spirits and Deities tour was slightly disappointing. Not only was our tour guide an older white woman, but all the other tourists on the tour were white. To be clear, I do not dislike Caucasian people, nor do I wish to stand in the way of them and art history. However, I was hoping to see a few more faces of color on an ancestors’ tour in the Arts of Africa hall.
Though our tour guide was very nice and knowledgeable, there were still a few awkward moments on the tour. Most notably, there was a moment when the tour guide was giving information about a carved, wooden statue of an African couple from Nigeria and one of the other tourists asked "But why are their noses so thin? Don't Africans have wide-set noses?" My face burned as I tried not to notice the other tourists peering in my direction, subtly examining my face.
Whether it was a real or imagined paranoia, I felt like my very presence in that space was a test of some sort. And each time I answered one of the docent’s questions, it summoned memories of being the only black student in high school or college classes. Still, I don’t regret taking the tour at all. Maybe it was a bit awkward, but it was also a valuable and insightful experience.
By the time it ended I was starving, and my feet were killing me! I booked a Lyft and rode the few blocks to Marinara Pizza for lunch. Marinara is a small pizza parlor; the food was as good as the reviews and mostly families came in while I was there. I stayed just long enough to eat my pizza and charge my phone before hopping on the subway to meet my guide for the speakeasy tour.
The group was instructed to meet our guide, Rory, at The 21 Club in midtown. Rory, who is Norwegian, Irish, Scottish, English, and Nigerian, is a licensed NYC tour guide. She began by giving us a quick history lesson outside The 21 Club.
Though I was also the only black woman on the prohibition tour, I didn’t feel like it. The other tourists included a co-ed group of Canadians, a woman from Brazil, a man from Sweden, a couple from Kansas, a woman from Seattle and a woman from San Francisco by way of Boston. Our tour of 11 or 12 set off on W 52nd Street toward the first official stop on our tour: a small, old, vibrantly decorated and dimly lit speakeasy called Flute Bar & Lounge. Rory provides one drink at this location—the Intime, a delicious mix of three traditional Champagne wine grapes with ginger extract. I also purchased another of the bar’s signature cocktails, the Antoinette, for $14 plus a tip for the bartender. The group sat on soft, chenille sofas and sipped our spirits as Rory stood and told us about Flute’s rich history and original owner, Texas Guinan. As the dim lights reflected the glowing red of the furnishings, I felt like a kid listening to ghost stories 'round the campfire.
Next, we walked to the Lillie’s Victorian Establishment, stopping to soak up bits of history along the way. During this walk, Rory also outlined the requirements a bar must meet to be classified as a speakeasy. In order to be considered a modern speakeasy, she said a bar must meet at least two of the following requirements: A hidden location, a 1920s theme, and/or a focus on mixology.
Soon we arrived at Lillie’s Victorian Establishment, a breathtaking restaurant with crown molded ceilings and a huge stain-glass mural on the rear wall of the main dining area. The building was previously a church that has been creatively converted into a bar. While there, I ordered a Mexican Derby, made with Goza Reposado Tequila, grapefruit, honey, and sage; and I ordered the fried calamari. I really wanted to order the Half-Roasted Chicken with mashed potatoes and chef’s veggies, but I fell prey to peer pressure since the other tourists in the group ordered small bites.
While at Lillie’s, our group became engrossed in a conversation about the current political climate in America. It mostly consisted of myself and the woman from San Francisco discussing our feelings about the Fraud of Fifth Street.
Once we finished our food and drinks, most of us made our way to the final stop on the tour. The couple from Kansas left early to see The Book of Mormon and San Francisco went to meet a friend. But Rory bought the rest of a beer at The Landmark Tavern in Hell’s Kitchen. As we sipped our beers, Rory told us about the buildings sorted history and haunted halls, then bid us adieu and left us to our devices.
The group of Canadians, who were celebrating a birthday, invited me and the Swedish gentlemen to join them for a late supper in the restaurant. We continued our conversation and decided to go to two other beer bars Rory suggested. The first bar seemed much like any other sports bar anywhere else on earth. The cool thing? The University of Houston was playing on TV, during March Madness, in NYC!!!! (I ordered a Crispin Rose Hard Cider and jammed out to the sounds of Biggie, Shaggy, and Rhianna with the Swedish gentlemen, 35. The Canadians looked lost.)
We made our final stop at Beer Authority, where I ordered some oysters before heading out around 1:30 a.m. I had planned to hop on the A-train across from the bar and take the subway back to Brooklyn. Unfortunately, the A train, which would have run from all the way from Midtown to Brooklyn, was closed for maintenance. Too bad CityMapper didn’t know that. I tried to use my street smarts to re-navigate. But I ended up traveling three stops in the wrong direction, back toward time square. At that point, I got frustrated and decided to get a Lyft. But it would've taken the Lyft loner to get to me than it took me to walk to the correct non-A-train subway station. I chose the latter and finally made it back to Brooklyn buzzed and exhausted around 3:30 a.m.
Day 3: I’m on a boat!
From left to right: I found this cute little book about dinosaurs, titled "All my friends are dead," at Posman Books in Rockefeller Plaza; Lady Liberty, captured from the rear deck of the Circle Line Sightseeing Cruise ship; The Empire State Building from a window seal at Top of the Rock Observation Deck.
I slept in until about 10:30 the next morning, then met my younger cousins at Madame Tussauds. Ultimately, they decided against paying $34 to look wax figurines and, upon my suggestion, we ventured to Otto’s Tacos for lunch. A sucker for social media food porn, I have long followed Otto's on Instagram but was disappointed with my real-life experience there. Though the restaurant’s Instagram page is an endless eye-buffet of mouthwatering delicious tacos, Otto’s Tacos doesn’t hold a candle to most roadside taquerias in Houston.
After eating our lackluster lunch and stopping at Starbucks for a pick-me-up, we trekked to the Rockefeller Center, perusing the downstairs bookshop before heading up for our scheduled ticket time at Top of the Rock observation deck.
Despite the brisk March air and speedy winds, my cousins, their grandmother and I spent more than two hours taking photos from and on the deck. My 11-year-old cousin and I were the only ones’ brave (or warm-blooded) enough to climb the stairs and view the city from the third, open-air roof observation deck, located on the 70th floor. Then my 17-year-old cousin and I had a mini-photo-and-snapchat shoot at one of the indoor window seals featuring a particularly attractive view of the city. We even bought the $20 souvenir picture captured by the staff prior to our ascent.
Once we finally decided to come down, we headed farther uptown to our second tourist excursion for the day, Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises’ Harbor Lights Cruise, stopping for pictures in Times Square along the way. By the time we made it to the boat, I was tired but feigned an upbeat disposition for the chi’ren. Thankfully, the Harbor tour was a relaxing experience. For most of the ride, the cuzzos, Grandma and I sipped our hot cocoa and listened to the tour director’s entertaining narration as we looked at sights through the ship's window. Once we got closer to the Statue of Liberty, the cuzzos and I ventured onto the upper deck to snap a few photos.
This remains one of the most memorable moments of my trip. The cold air on my cheeks, an illuminated Lady Liberty proudly holding her torch of progress before my very eyes, it is probably the most America I have ever felt. Still, the words of poet Amir Safi echoed in my mind: "If the French gave us the statue of Liberty in 2003, we would’ve given it back because they didn’t go to war with us in EE-Rock. Eye-Rack. When the French did give us the statue of Liberty, we gave her back because at first she was black." I posted the picture with the caption “#ForAll” because, like so many others, I'm still waiting.
By the time our ship docked and we got off the boat, everyone was tired. After waiting too long for our Lyft to show up, we begrudgingly walked the three blocks (0.7 miles) to Chirping Chicken to grab a bite to eat, then parted ways for the night and the remainder of our perspective trips.
Day 4: Experiencing Brooklyn
From left to right: Notorious B.I.G. mural at Bedford Avenue and Quincy Street; Wynnie's gorgeous setup for Haitian Tea; and the “Bet’s Burden” interactive display, part of the Brooklyn Historical Society's Waterfront Exhibit.
By Saturday morning, my feet were sore from traipsing around the city in boots for three days and my pockets were nearly empty. Consequently, I decided to plan a day full of relaxing and cost-effective activities.
Still in bed, I found a quaint, locally-owned coffee shop on Yelp where I decided to go for breakfast. I also looked up the addresses of some famous Brooklyn murals, which I could walk to before my pre-scheduled Haitian Tea. Lastly, I decided to go to the Brooklyn Historical Society DUMBO location because the Brooklyn location would likely be closed or nearly closed by the time I left tea.
I finally pried myself out of bed, put on my makeup and my sneakers, and headed out the door around 10:30 a.m. Sincerely, Tommy concept store and coffee shop was my first stop. I was intrigued by the store's Yelp page and website and they did not disappoint! One half of the space is an emerging womenswear and lifestyle store; the other half is the coffee shop. I ordered a regular coffee and a spinach-tomato-feta turnover and enjoyed about half an hour there, people watching and listening to The Read. I quickly downloaded a “Best of New York Hip-Hop” playlist before leaving to see some Brooklyn murals.
Unfortunately, I only made it to one stop—the Biggie mural on Bedford Avenue and Quincy Street—before it was time for my preplanned Haitian Tea. As chance would have it, I was Wynnie’s only tea guest that day. Wynnie, who is the founder and managing director of the Haitian Creole Language Institute of New York, was a gracious host with a radiant type of energy. She welcomed me into the space and made me feel so comfortable. Before long, I was talking to her about my childhood in rural East Texas and listening to her story about venturing to Kentucky for a friend’s wedding. In the couple hours we spent together, I felt as if I created a bond with my host that I didn't have with some of my friends back home.
As we talked, we tasted the four teas Wynnie had prepared. Each tea is made of leaves or grasses and has healing properties. She also introduced me to two new artists while I was there—Niska and Fidel Nadal. I downloaded Niska most recent album “Enèji,” a hip-hop record in Haitian Creole, on the spot. Later, I downloaded Fidel Nadal’s (a black Argentinian artist whom Wynnie met at a retreat) reggae album “Dame una Alegría.”
After we finished our teas, we walked down to Kafe Louverture for Haitian Pâté (included in the Airbnb experience). Wynnie gave me some recommendations of other Haitian clubs and restaurants to visit while I was in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, because it was my last night in the city, I was unable to explore any of them.
Instead, I hopped on the subway toward Dumbo to visit the Brooklyn Historical Society. DUMBO, which is still in the Brooklyn borough, stands for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.” Originally a manufacturing district, then a less affluent residential district, DUMBO has recently been developed (*cough* gentrified) into a historical district featuring a sprawling park and the Empire Stores shopping center.
And on the third floor of the Empire Store complex is the Brooklyn Historical Society. Though entry is technically free, they do have suggested admissions prices; I paid the $6 admission fee for teachers. The museum was nearly empty by the time I arrived around 6 p.m. I stayed until closing, exploring all of the fascinating, tactile and interactive stations at the Waterfront Exhibit. I watched a documentary in the film room about the history of the waterfront, from the time before English settlers to present. I learned about the life of Bet, an enslaved woman who worked on a nearby farm in the 1700’s. And I learned about the commerce and workers who’d worked at the waterfront over its long history.
After leaving the museum, I ordered takeout on the way back to the Airbnb and decided to simply relax before my flight out the next morning.
Day 5: Home to Texas
The next morning, I woke up at 9 a.m., packed my suitcase and took the subway back to LaGuardia Airport. I was floating. I experienced so much on my trip to the largest, and probably the most famous, city in America.
I learned a lot about myself. I did things that were somewhat uncomfortable, but always enjoyable. I used my selfie stick, I made new friends, I lived. But I didn’t get to do everything I wanted while I was there! Follow this link to see my list of things I’ll do and see on my next visit.
I returned to Houston tired, with school the next day, but full of a type of energy and vision that only travel can inspire. In July, I began planning my solo trip to Cuba in November, post coming soon.
