Guest Nomad: Tourist Happily Trapped In NYC
This week's "Guest Nomad" Laura Kyle.
This week’s “Guest Nomad” is Laura Kyle. Laura is an SEO and travel writer living in Texas’ weirdest city, Austin. Most of her work can be found on Vacation Rentals.com, the #1 site for vacation rental deals.
Tourist Happily Trapped In NYC
It’s okay to be a tourist when you’re little. Pointing your finger up at a skyscraper – your eyes as big as New York, and your awareness of the passersby tripping over you as small as your Texas hometown – is cute when you’re six.
It’s not cute when you’re 20 something.
Don’t get me wrong… I’ve never worn a baggy white t-shirt plastered with “I,” a heart, and “NY.” I’ve never lost my balance in a subway, despite public transport being a myth here in Austin. I see the buses, but I have no idea where they go or where they come from!
And I’ve definitely never been caught wearing a fanny pack – not even in old vacation photos.
Classy!
But even if it’s not cool to be a tourist, I am A-OK with looking and acting like one. Especially in New York City.
I’d need more than two hands to count the number of times I’ve been to the Big Apple. Yes, I really am that bad at math. But no matter how many times I go, my jaw still drops when I see the lit-up Christmas tree at Rockefeller, and I still resemble a deer in the headlights when I try to jaywalk through Times Square (I haven’t been since pedestrians replaced the taxis).
Generation X and Y globe trotters – trust fund babies with a enough money to go around the world and back, and genuinely restless explorers – are a fiery lot, quick to tell you about their next adventure, and even quicker to lament about how everyone else is going to the wrong places, seeing the wrong attractions, and doing all the wrong things (like wasting money away on collectible key chains and shot glasses).
The next time I stroll through Central Park, window shop on Fifth Avenue, sing along – in my head, of course – to a Broadway show, or [insert other clichéd NYC activity], I will not blend in with the locals.
I will obviously take snap shots of things, I will ask for directions, I will say something along the lines of “New Yorkers are kinda rude,” I will rave about how good the pizza is, I will try to spot celebrities, and I could very well wind up on TV at some point.
I want to do these typical touristy things, because I am a typical tourist.
I don’t live in New York. I don’t know every gritty little detail about the city. I don’t want to know every little gritty detail.
I’m a tourist. And that’s okay.
