I Went to New York Without a Vacation Itinerary. Here’s What Happened Instead.

What eight days of slow travel in New York City taught me about seeing less, staying longer, and leaving room for a place to surprise you.

I spent eight days in New York City this summer and didn't go to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, a Broadway show, or a single museum. And somehow, it might have been my favorite trip to New York I've ever taken.

This trip was a little different from the beginning. I wasn't technically on vacation. I was staying at a friend's apartment in Williamsburg, had work to do while I was there, and didn't arrive with much of an itinerary. There were places I wanted to explore and a few things I wanted to scout for an upcoming Say Yes trip, but otherwise, I had eight days and the freedom to decide what I felt like doing when I woke up each morning.

And because I've been to New York enough times now, I didn't feel any pressure to see the things you're "supposed" to see. I already have places in the city that I love. Places I return to nearly every time I'm there.

Washington Square Park is one of them.

There is something about that park that makes me want to stay awhile. I love the arch and the view up Fifth Avenue, but mostly I love sitting there and watching New York happen around me. Musicians play. Dogs and their people come through. NYU students gather. Someone is always doing something interesting, and there are a thousand little stories unfolding at once.

So one morning I grabbed a bagel and an iced coffee and did exactly what I love doing when I'm in New York: I took them to Washington Square Park, found a spot under the arch, and stayed for a while.

There was nothing new about it. That was the point.

I wasn't there because a guide told me Washington Square Park was one of the top things to do in New York City. I was there because I already knew I loved being there.

And I think that's when a place starts to change for you. You stop asking, "What haven't I seen yet?" and start asking, "Where do I want to go back to?"

That question shaped almost the entire trip.

I stopped trying to accomplish New York

I've been thinking a lot about the way we travel, especially because I now plan trips for other women. We save money, use our vacation days, book the flight and finally get ourselves to the place we've been dreaming about. Then, almost immediately, we give ourselves a job: make the most of it.

That usually means seeing as much as possible, making reservations for every meal, visiting all the places we've saved on Instagram and figuring out how to fit one more stop into an already full afternoon. I understand the impulse. When you've spent thousands of dollars to get somewhere, sitting in a coffee shop reading a book for three hours can feel like you're wasting precious vacation time.

But I wasn't trying to accomplish New York on this trip. I already knew I loved New York. This time I wanted to know what it felt like to simply live there for a little while.

So instead of asking myself what I needed to see each day, I started asking where I wanted to spend the day.

Sometimes that meant choosing a neighborhood and wandering. I mostly spent time in Williamsburg, Greenwich Village, the Upper West Side, the East Village, the Lower East Side, SoHo, and Gramercy. I rode the subway and took the ferry. I walked a lot. If a street looked interesting, I went down it. If I found a bookstore, I went inside. If I liked where I was, I stayed longer than I'd planned.

One day I wandered through Gramercy and the East Village. I stopped at Pete's Tavern because I wanted to scout it for my November Say Yes trip, walked past Gramercy Park, grabbed a bagel and sat in Tompkins Square Park, found the Ruth Bader Ginsburg mural, and eventually made my way to the Tenement Museum bookstore, where, of course, I bought a book.

Then I ended up at Book Club Bar on the Lower East Side. I ordered a coffee, opened my new book, and stayed there for hours.

There was a time when I would have considered spending several hours of a New York trip reading in a coffee shop to be a spectacular misuse of vacation time. I could read at home. I was in NEW YORK.

Except I couldn't have that particular afternoon at home. I couldn't read that book at that table while people came and went around me, then step outside and find myself back on the Lower East Side with the rest of the evening completely open.

That afternoon became one of my favorite parts of the trip.

The neighborhoods became the destination

I've noticed this shift happening in the way I travel over the last few years. I'm becoming much more interested in neighborhoods than attractions.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to see the landmarks. I love plenty of them. I will happily stand in front of the Empire State Building and stare up like a tourist, and I'm taking a group of women to New York this November to see the Rockettes, the holiday markets and the city completely decked out for Christmas.

But those aren't necessarily the moments that make me feel like I know a place.

That happens when I start recognizing where I am without looking at a map. When I know which subway stop gets me home. When I have a coffee shop I want to go back to. When I notice a storefront I missed the day before. When I sit in a park long enough to stop feeling like I'm visiting it and start feeling like I'm simply spending my morning there.

Staying in Williamsburg helped with that, too. Instead of walking out of a Midtown hotel every morning, I was waking up in a neighborhood. I could make coffee, get some work done and decide later what part of the city sounded good that day. At night, I could come back and sit on the terrace looking across at the Manhattan skyline.

Some days I didn't even need to cross the river. Williamsburg had coffee shops and bookstores and the waterfront, and I started developing my own little routines there.

It felt less like visiting New York and more like borrowing a tiny piece of life there for eight days.

Some of the best things weren't planned at all

One of my favorite afternoons happened because of Instagram.

I connected with Paige and Kristen, two women who had met through traveling, and we decided to meet while I was in the city. We wandered around SoHo, got coffee, looked in storefronts and talked. There wasn't a major attraction involved or some elaborate plan for the afternoon. It was just three women who hadn't known each other before spending part of a day together in New York.

For someone who built a travel company around the idea that the destination isn't really the point, this should probably not continue to surprise me. But it does.

The places matter. Of course they do. I want to see beautiful things and eat good food and stand somewhere I've only ever seen in photographs. But when I think back on the trips that have meant the most to me, I usually remember the people and the small moments first.

I remember the conversation. The ridiculous thing someone said that made everyone laugh. The coffee shop where we stayed longer than expected. The sunset we stopped to watch even though we were supposed to be going somewhere else.

Those are difficult things to put on an itinerary.

You have to leave room for them to happen.

I still had hard days

There's another part of this trip that belongs in the story.

I had a couple of hard days in New York.

There is a strange pressure that can come with being somewhere wonderful. I was in a city I love, staying in a beautiful apartment with a terrace overlooking Manhattan, with the freedom to spend my days however I wanted. I knew how fortunate I was to be there. So when I had days when I felt low and didn't have much energy, there was a part of me that thought I shouldn't feel that way.

But travel doesn't remove us from ourselves.

You can be incredibly grateful for your life and still have a hard day. You can be somewhere you've been looking forward to visiting and not feel like going out into it. One feeling doesn't cancel out the other.

So I stopped trying to force those days into becoming something else. I worked. I read. I stayed closer to the apartment. One evening, going down to the Williamsburg waterfront and watching the sunset was enough.

New York was still there the next morning.

I think that's another gift of staying somewhere a little longer. There isn't quite as much pressure on any one day. A slower day doesn't mean you've ruined your trip or missed your only opportunity. You can listen to yourself and trust that tomorrow will bring something different.

This is changing the way I think about Say Yes trips

I came home thinking a lot about what those eight days taught me, not just as a traveler but as the person behind Say Yes Travel Co.

I've always known I didn't want Say Yes trips to feel like traditional guided tours. I don't want to march a group through a city with every hour scheduled and a list of seventeen things we need to accomplish before dinner. But I'm getting clearer about what I want instead.

I want to take care of enough that the women traveling with me don't have to carry the mental load of the trip.

I'll figure out where we're staying. I'll think about transportation. I'll make the reservations. I'll research the places worth seeing and the things worth experiencing. I'll worry about how we get from one place to another and whether we're trying to fit too much into one day.

Then I want to leave room.

I want there to be enough space in our trips that if we're sitting around a table having a great conversation, we don't have to cut it short because the itinerary says we're supposed to be somewhere else. If everyone falls in love with a little shop, we can stay. If we find a coffee shop we adore, maybe we go back the next morning. If someone wants an hour to herself to read, wander or sit somewhere beautiful, that should be part of the trip, too.

And I want women to have the chance to find their own Washington Square Park.

Not literally. Although if you're traveling to New York with me, there's a very good chance I'll take you there.

I mean the place you weren't necessarily expecting to love quite so much. The place where you don't need to be entertained or educated or shown anything. You just like being there.

Because those moments aren't what happens between the important parts of travel.

They are the important parts.

I don't need to finish New York

I left the city with a very long list of things I didn't do.

I'm surprisingly happy about that.

There are museums I haven't wandered through, restaurants I haven't tried, streets I haven't walked and bookstores I haven't found yet. I don't feel like I missed them. I feel like I have reasons to go back.

And I will go back. That's one of the things I know about New York now. There will always be another neighborhood to wander and another bookstore to find, but there will also be the places I've loved for years waiting for me to return.

Maybe that's what slow travel has started to mean to me. It isn't necessarily staying somewhere for a month or traveling without a plan. It's letting go of the idea that we have to finish a place while we're there.

I don't need to finish New York.

I'd rather know that when I come back, I can grab a bagel and an iced coffee and head straight for Washington Square Park. I can sit beneath the arch, watch the city move around me, and feel that little spark of recognition that comes from returning somewhere you love.

I'd rather remember reading for hours at Book Club Bar, wandering the East Village with nowhere I needed to be, taking the ferry because I wanted to be on the water, meeting two women I'd previously only known through Instagram, and watching Manhattan light up from a terrace in Williamsburg.

I used to think a great trip was measured, at least partly, by how much I managed to fit into it.

Now I'm much more interested in a different question:

How much of it did I actually notice?

Eight days in New York and I barely scratched the surface.

That's okay.

I'll be back.