Doing It All Wrong

Every city in the world has a tourism 'to do' list. If you go to Paris and pass up on the Louvre, you've done it wrong. If you're larking around in London but you don't take a spin on the Eye, you've done it wrong. If you head to the Big Apple and neglect to say "hi" to the Statue of Liberty, you've done it wrong.
I have travelled to all of these cities. I have done them all wrong.

Let's take the most basic form of travel: walking. When we visited New York in 2009, my sisters and I went for a stroll around the Jackie O reservoir in Central Park. As we meandered around, taking in the bold city skyline that surrounds the park, it occurred to me that everyone else on the circular path appeared to be travelling in the opposite direction to us. "What a weirdly profound metaphor," I thought to myself. "Three Brits taking a stroll on a sunny November morning, defying the fast-paced NY lifestyle by taking it easy on a beautiful day while everyone around us hurries off in a different direction." After a minute or two, it occurred to me that the actual reason we seemed to be bucking the trend was that the path around the reservoir operated a strict (and, in hindsight, very sensible) one-way system for pedestrians. It wasn't until we were back to our starting point and saw a sign that confirmed my suspicions that my sisters agreed to entertain the idea. Being proud and patriotic English women, we desperately tried to find someone to apologize to before making a swift and surreptitious exit.
We also visited some friends on that trip, who took us to a jazz bar on the lower east side of Manhattan. It was a subterranean heaven of throaty laughter and clinking whiskey glasses. The night was threaded with deep, thrumming riffs and intriguing sidelong glances. It was, basically, the most achingly cool place I'd ever been.
I had left my passport at the hotel, and almost missed the whole evening by being unable to prove my age. One of my American friends convinced the bouncer that "Brits never lie, dude", and so managed to get me inside. I'm so glad that he did: the new friends we made, the new drinks we tried and the new music we were exposed to was one the best and most relaxed experiences of the whole trip. We may have missed the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, and we may have completely forgotten about the Rockefeller Center. But we came home from the States convinced that we had done New York completely, utterly and absolutely right.