Spending all my days on the east side3/18/2023 ![]() I wear the heavy stuff (carpenter pants, t-shirt, and long sleeve dress-y over-shirt with pocket 5, and jacket for cooler climates) on the plane 6. ![]() Everything in it has a place, and that place doesn’t change.įor clothing I basically bring the same things I listed in my “How to Walk 12 Miles a day” post. You’ll be surprised how much you’ve overpacked. Next time you travel, when you get home, unpack and see what you didn’t use. Especially if you have a washing machine and don’t care too much what you look like. I don’t expect everyone else to do that, but you really don’t need to bring much. I spent three months traveling around the world using only a book-bag. Which usually means, given the neighborhoods I stay, between 10-40 bucks/night.Īll I used for a three month around the world trip Beyond that, I don’t really care, and chose the cheapest home with those. I need four things in a place - a private bathroom, a washing machine, wifi, and a place I can sit for a long time and write. Does that sound and look like a place you want to hang out in at night? Can you image yourself happily stumbling out of bed at 6 am and walking down the street to get whatever breakfast. Look at all the reviews and pictures posted. Which you can do pretty cheaply if you stay away from the neighborhoods with clusters of fancy restaurants.įinding the exact apartment is a similar virtual process. For some, who worry more about safety, I get staying in hotels. When you’ve narrowed down to the specific neighborhood, then drill down on where exactly to stay. I often spend days doing this, thinking through my day, imaging my routine, and virtually recreating it. The best neighborhoods have lots of bus lines going through it. Then chose a random place in another part of town, maybe that cool neighborhood, and use the directions and public transportation option to see if it’s easy to get from your hood to there. Does it look like a place you will want to spend a few weeks in? Are you creeped out by the vibes? If you like coffee in the morning, is there a place you can walk to each morning that looks like your kind of place? Start virtually walking through the area. Once you used the restaurant filter to find a few neighborhoods, start using the Street View function. They are chock full of can’t miss spots, that you can miss, and you should. Your buildings plastered with historic plaques. Your restaurants that everyone says you have to go to. They are the places of quaint storefronts mobbed with American retirees, hip bars filled with plastered 25 year old Brits, and a few monuments with millions of Instagram posts.ĭespite being in very different cities, they all feel the same. These are usually the cool parts of town and I mostly avoid 2 them. These are the well known restaurants that often pay to show up first, have thousands of reviews, and are reflective of a very narrow part of the city. The first places that pop up will all be clustered in a few areas. My first step is bringing up the city on google maps and click the restaurants tab. Do all the essential and logistical stuff before doing far more interesting meeting people stuff. It allows you to tour a city from your laptop. To figure out where those are, google maps is your best friend. The neighborhoods where most people live, but few visit. My general rule of thumb, like in every choice I make when traveling, is to go to the less visited parts. That makes where you stay in a city more important than the city itself.Ĭhoosing the neighborhood and place to stay NYC is as much Dyker Heights as it is Upper East Side. Some cities are so important they can’t be missed, and every city is a confederation of very different neighborhoods. That doesn’t mean entirely ignoring places like NYC, Istanbul, Seoul, or Tokyo. They’ve got such a strong self-image, a strong desire to be seen as special, that many residents have become actors playing NYC, or LA. While NYC and LA are absolutely great, and you can learn tons from them, they can lull you into a skewed sense of the US. The US equivalent is to go to Indianapolis instead of NYC or Houston instead of LA. When I decided to go to Vietnam, everything and everyone told me to go to Ho Chi Minh City. Cities where the residents are more focused on living their life, for themselves, not for a global audience. Cities that are viewed as ugly, or without a lot to see. Once I’ve narrowed down the region (Muslim countries, or Buddhist cities, etc) I try to find non-traditional tourist destinations. That means finding a single city, and spending all my time there, with only a few days dedicated to side trips, but side trips that residents actually do. To become a local, or at least blend in as best I can. In doing one place for as long as I can, rather than running all around trying to see everything.
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