Only in New York with Jill Zarin and the Bowery Boys

Out Travel the System is taking a big bite out of the Big Apple with this episode, showcasing what you can do Only in New York.

Join host Nisreene Atassi and her guests, original Real Housewife of New York Jill Zarin, and Greg Young and Tom Meyers, hosts of The Bowery Boys, a podcast all about New York’s history.

Ever wondered about why they’re called boroughs, or wanted to visit the restaurant where Bethenny Frankel said she was going to poke Zarin in the eyes? Or maybe you want to hear about two of Brooklyn’s best BBQ joints, or vote with your wallet among three choices for New York’s best pizza… then this is the episode for you!

From hidden gem restaurants to insider secrets about where to get the most out of your New York experience – including where to get the best shot for your Instagram and which islands to visit – you won’t want to miss this. Listen in so you can design your next trip to do what you can do Only in New York.

Here are links to a couple of Bowery Boys episodes mentioned in this episode of Out Travel the System:
-an audio walking tour of the High Line
-the history of four cocktails

If you’re planning out an itinerary for a visit to New York at some point, here are some of the places mentioned in the episode:

Restaurants:
Katz’s Deli
Lombardi’s
Arturo’s (no website available)
John’s of Bleecker
Pig Beach BBQ
Hometown BBQ

Nightlife:

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Only in New York with Jill Zarin and the Bowery Boys

Nisreene Atassi: When I was reflecting back in preparation for this episode, I was thinking about just how different every trip to New York has actually been for me. Between personal and work, I’ve been dozens and dozens of times. And each time, something really special or unique happens, or I see something totally different. I remember my first time going to Brooklyn. I remember my first time getting lost in Queens. I remember my first time taking the subway by myself before smartphones were actually a thing. And the city changes and it evolves, some may say for the worst, some may say for the better. But for a traveler, I think it gives you a lot of opportunities to keep coming back.

Nisreene Atassi: I’m Nisreene Atassi, and this is Out Travel the System. We love all the cities that we’ve been profiling in our ‘Only In’ series. But you have to admit, there’s nothing quite like the Big Apple. That’s the journey we’re going on today, virtually, thanks to our very special guests. I have with me today Jill Zarin, she’s a designer, entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist. You may also recognize her from her time on the infamous Real Housewives of New York. Hi Jill, welcome to the show.

Jill Zarin: Hi, thank you so much. Great to be here.

Nisreene Atassi: Also here with us today, are the hosts of the awesome New York history of podcast, The Bowery Boys. First up, hello to Greg Young.

Greg Young: Hello, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having us on.

Nisreene Atassi: And hi, to Tom Meyers. Tom, welcome to Out Travel the System.

Tom Meyers: Thanks for having us on, Nissy.

Nisreene Atassi: All right, well, let’s dive right in. Jill, let’s start with you. Thanks in part to your time on The Real Housewives of New York, you must get questions about New York all the time. Like even when you’re traveling in other parts of the world. Why do you think people are so fascinated with NYC?

Jill Zarin: Ellis Island, the history of New York, and people coming to the United States and settling it. They may be coming back here to get some history on their own family. I also think culturally, because there’s so many people living in a small area, we built for our own community, a theater, Broadway and the Met.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Jill Zarin: And so many different things that are unique to New York City, that it’s just easy when people traveled to be able to hit it all in one place.

Nisreene Atassi: It’s so interesting that you just referred to New York City as a community, because I have never heard anyone refer to it that way, because you always just think of it as this big city. I completely understand how as like a native New Yorker, someone who’s lived there their whole life, how it could really feel like a community. I also think New York is such a popular setting for movies and TV shows, that probably has a big part to do with the magic of it all.

Greg Young: When people think of New York, they think skyline, they think tall buildings.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Greg Young: Usually they’re visualizing midtown. New York is a place of islands. New York as a place of ferries. New York is a place of quiet residential neighborhoods. New York is a place where you’ll have a New England type neighborhood that sells lobster rolls. On the other side, you’ll have a trendy shopping area.

Nisreene Atassi: Just for anyone listening, who’s never been to New York, Jill, could you give us a quick rundown of the layout of Manhattan’s neighborhoods and the surrounding boroughs?

Jill Zarin: We’ll start downtown. You have the financial district. Then you have the seaport area. It’s gone through a lot of changes now. It had a big retail presence. Then it went into restaurants. But there’s a lot of stuff down there. And then you’ve got Chinatown, Little Italy, Noho, Soho all within 15 blocks of each other. Then you’ve got what they call the Lower East Side. And then you start moving up and you have the East Village-

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Jill Zarin: Greenwich Village, and then the West Village. And then you move up a little bit more and you have NoMad, which is north of Madison Avenue. You start to kind of get into this midtown between 23rd and 60th. You keep going, you have the Upper East Side. There’s Chelsea tucked in there. We have Hell’s Kitchen. They have the Highline area. Hudson Yards, I mean, that’s a neighborhood.

Tom Meyers: New York is both smaller and larger than people anticipate if they haven’t been here before.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Tom Meyers: If you land say in a hotel in Midtown and you’re around Times Square, you’re in the Theater district. You’re like a 10 minute walk to Central Park, you’re a 25 minute walk down to the Village- ish area. You can really experience a lot in a short period of time. But it’s also much, much bigger. We’ve been talking about neighborhoods that are just on the island or in the borough of Manhattan. New York City is five boroughs, and Manhattan is one of them. So there’s also Brooklyn, and Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. So New York is vast. It’s this huge place. All of these boroughs, all of the neighborhoods that are in these boroughs, are also worthy of exploration.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah. I love that. New York City is actually like an incredibly walkable place. I love that aspect of the city.

Jill Zarin: So it’s important that you pick a time of year, that you want to walk, and don’t bring uncomfortable shoes. Make sure they’re shoes you’ve worn before. Bring an umbrella. You never know, it could rain. The fall and the spring are the best times to come. When you still get that wearing a jacket, not a heavy coat, and it’s not too hot.

Greg Young: The thing is, is there’s so many personalities to New York-

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Greg Young: … that I suspect that whatever it is you’re looking for on a particular day, you’ll be able to find it in New York, able to get there efficiently, either on the subway, or a taxi, or a car service, or a bicycle, or a ferry.

Nisreene Atassi: Greg and Tom, you’re both long time New Yorkers as well. And I don’t have to tell you just how fascinating the city is. You’ve dedicated your podcast to it with more than 350 episodes of The Bowery Boys and counting. Why is it called a borough? That’s like a really specific New York term.

Greg Young: It’s a European term that New York in 1898 sort of reinvented. I mean, it’s a very long story, but essentially New York and Brooklyn were two of the biggest independent cities in the United States. And they decided to merge into one, because they needed to share their resources. And along the way, they gathered up areas around that as well. Creating the borough of Queens. Bronx was already kind of in there for a while. Staten Island was its own thing. They all joined in, in 1898. But because the city is so big, you can’t just really call them neighborhoods. And they already had really longstanding administrative architecture, and they each have a different style and feel. So a borough means kind of a collection of very independent places, but we’re all one city.

Nisreene Atassi: One of the things I love most about doing this show is this idea of revealing hidden gems or insider local secrets about a destination for the audience.

Jill Zarin: Speakeasies in New York City. There’s one called UES, stands for Upper East Side. And you go through an ice cream shop, and it’s a real ice cream shop, you can go in for ice cream and leave. Or if you keep going in for ice cream and you see a few people may be walking through the back door that don’t look like they should be. There’s a bar in the back.

Nisreene Atassi: That is cool.

Jill Zarin: There’s a restaurant called Philippe Chow on 60th and Madison, between Madison and Park. You have to reserve it in advance. There’s no name for it, you just call up and say, ” I want to eat downstairs, down, downstairs.” You literally go down the steps that the waiters go up and down, through the kitchen, you see the dinner. And there was this beautiful room in the back that could maybe seat like 20 people with three big TVs and you can watch sports games. People smoke cigars down there. I mean, it’s quite a thing. And we filmed it on The Real Housewives of New York. I got them to let me film because my friend used to own the restaurant, he doesn’t anymore. But he’d let me film there. People may or may not remember there was a scene where Bethany said I’m going to poke you in the eyes. That was the one. That was at Philippe.

Nisreene Atassi: Tom and Greg. What about you guys? Do you have any favorite hidden gems that you would want to recommend to our listeners.

Tom Meyers: In terms of what’s new and trendy, we can tell you what’s trending from the 1890s.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Tom Meyers: We’ve got a whole list. We specialize in old New York. If you’re in Grand Central or Grand Central Terminal, as this building is known, it was built in the first decade after 1900, the first decade of the 20th century. The restaurant that’s downstairs, it’s not exactly a hidden gem, but the Oyster Bar is an absolute must if you want to have good seafood fish, oysters. It’s a beautiful spot. It is tucked away underneath Grand Central Terminal.

Nisreene Atassi: That’s cool.

Tom Meyers: The ceiling is what’s one of the most notable things about the restaurant, it’s completely tiled in guastavino tiles. It’s a vaulted ceiling and it’s so beautiful. It’ll take your breath away.

Nisreene Atassi: Gosh, there is absolutely so much for us to cover, but we have to take just a quick break. When we come back, we’re going to tackle everything from culture, nightlife, and of course our signature questions about what to do when you are only in New York. So stay with us.

Nisreene Atassi: This is Out Travel the System and I’m your host, Nisreene Atassi. The appetite for travel seems like it’s never been higher, and we’re here to help you through the menu of all your choices. From the latest information on travel conditions, to tips and tricks to hack your next journey, you can travel like an expert, thanks to Out Travel the System. Take advantage of the data and trends we analyze for you, so that you can stay ahead of the booking game and on your budget. Get some inspiration from seasoned travelers sharing their stories with us, like our Unique Accommodations episode, or get into a vacation vibe with our Lakes episode. Get it all by liking and subscribing to Out Travel the System on your favorite podcast player.

Nisreene Atassi: All right, we are back with design entrepreneur, Jill Zarin, one of the original Real Housewives of New York. And we’ve also got Greg Young and Tom Meyers of the podcast, Bowery Boys. All right, Greg, let’s start back with you. What are some of your other hidden gems?

Greg Young: I’d like to recommend, actually, a couple places in Brooklyn. I mean, there’s so much of the cultural currency of New York City’s moved over here to Brooklyn in the past couple of years. And there’s so many new great restaurants and shops. I mean, some of the best restaurants in the city are here. Brooklyn actually has its own little barbecue scene.

Nisreene Atassi: Oh, okay.

Greg Young: Actually, which is pretty amazing. Two recommendations there. One of them is a place called Pig Beach, which is this awesome little outdoor place that fills up on the weekends. It’s a really wonderful place. And it’s on interestingly enough, the old Gowanus river. The Gowanus was this Revolutionary War site that in the 19th century became basically like an industrial canal, and was famous for being like putrid and disgusting.

Jill Zarin: The most polluted water in New York.

Greg Young: Yes, exactly. But Gowanus is sort of developing now into a neighborhood with brand new residences, and they’ve cleaned up the water. And Pig Beach is basically on the canal. It’s such a bizarre, but kind of wonderful experience. And the second place that has a BBQ tie is Homeland Barbecue. They have a location in Red Hook, down in Industry City is this fabulous new destination here in Brooklyn. It’s a series of old industrial buildings from like a hundred years ago. But what they’ve done is repurposed them basically into this adult playground. It’s restaurants, bars. In between the buildings you can play miniature golf and all kinds of different games. There’s tons of bands that perform. They have music, food halls. It’s so cool. And they have a great barbecue. It’s one of the big places called Homeland Barbecue.

Nisreene Atassi: I love that. So many people don’t realize that there are tons of little islands around Manhattan. What are some that travelers should really consider checking out the next time they’re in New York?

Tom Meyers: Governor’s Island and Roosevelt Island are both fun spots for people to visit. Totally unusual. Roosevelt Island is in the middle of the East river. So between Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and Queens and Brooklyn on the other side. But there’s a slender island that used to have penitentiaries on it, work houses on it, but also mid 20th century utopian style apartment buildings, including a lot of housing for the United Nations. It’s right across from the UN. So you can take a funicular over the East River and touch down in Roosevelt Island and walk around and you’ll feel like you’re in a different city.

Nisreene Atassi: Oh, I love that. And for those of you who don’t know, a funicular is sort of like a gondola.

Tom Meyers: Or like a cable car.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Tom Meyers: But one giant, giant cable car. I think that perhaps what, 75 people can squeeze into thing.

Nisreene Atassi: Oh wow. There you go. Okay. Greg, is there a backstory to one of the islands that you want to share?

Greg Young: There are a lot of really great places with deep rich history that have been turned into these recreational places, like Governor’s Island is a great one. It’s always packed on the weekends. But I would say New York’s hottest attraction right now is actually an island that has been completely fabricated. And it’s this little place called Little Island. It’s in the Meat Packing District. And the Meat Packing District is awesome. There’s nightclubs over there, and great eating, and the Highline, which is a great tourist attraction park on an old abandoned railroad track. Little Island is kind of an outgrowth of all of that because it’s this fabricated Fantasia, basically where people can go relax and it’s got breathtaking views of the Hudson River and all of New York City. And it’s just a great new entree into a New York City culture.

Nisreene Atassi: New York is so walkable. If you were designing a walking tour, what would you include and why?

Greg Young: I would start that walk actually at the tip of Manhattan and walk up through Greenwich Village, go over to the Highline. But really see Washington Square Park and really see the culture, and vibrancy, and history of the Village, because the Village is kind of a different kind of New York than either the financial district, which is the lowest, most southern part of Manhattan, and midtown, because those are very dominated by skyscrapers. Can be imposing. But the Village it’s such, I think, a welcoming place for everybody. And historically has been, from Stonewall, the Gay Rights movement, ’60s in Washington Square, and the hippies. And even the East Village and unique cultures that come out of there from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. So, I would say spending a lot of time in the Village and coming up with fun things to do. Including the Highline is very key.

Nisreene Atassi: There’s actually an episode of the Bowery Boys that’s a walking tour of the Highline. So we’ll link to that in our show notes. It’s a great listen for anyone looking to dig in a little bit more about that. If you think about places that were depicted in movies, do you have a handful of classic New York restaurants, or just general nightlife that you might recommend to some of our listeners who want to get a little bit of that old school, New York nostalgia?

Tom Meyers: When I think New York movies and eating, the first thing I think of actually is When Harry Met Sally-

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Tom Meyers: … and the classic dining scene.

Nisreene Atassi: Totally.

Tom Meyers: Which was filmed at Katz Delicatessen, which is on West Houston Street at the very top, at the Lower East Side. And that would be a must visit. It’s not chic dining. In fact, you’re going to need some Pepto afterwards. I’m sorry, Katz’s. But if you see how tall their pastrami sandwich is, you’ll understand what I’m saying.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Tom Meyers: It is a New York classic.

Nisreene Atassi: It sure is. I have a very distinct memory. I think of my first time going to New York when I was maybe in like middle school or high school, I was with family. We went to Katz’s Deli. And I mean, to say it’s a mile high of pastrami, is it feels like an over- exaggeration. But I don’t think it is. It’s a gigantic sandwich. It’s unbelievable.

Tom Meyers: And it’s so good. I mean, the thing, at least with me, I lose control. It’s so tasty. Yeah.

Nisreene Atassi: It’s so good.

Tom Meyers: Yeah. It’s incredible. And from there, for example, you could go for drinks afterwards at McSorley’s Ale House, which is four blocks away in the East Village. And it is one of the longest running, still open bar in Manhattan. Sawdust on the floor, you order a beer, they bring you two, because they’re small. It’s delicious.

Greg Young: If you even want to go a little bit further back-

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Greg Young: … than McSorley’s, there’s a really interesting area in the Financial District. And that is again, the southernmost area of Manhattan. There is this little area called Stone Street. And the buildings are all from the 1840s. You’re surrounded by all the grand skyscrapers of the Financial District. Here the buildings remain very small and very modest. And here you’re going to find all of these amazing old style taverns, each one better than the next, I think. I go there all the time, even for lunch or sometimes for dinner. All these different places from Ulysses to Stone Street Tavern. Again, they’ll all have this Irish flavor to them. And then they are all right next to a place called Fraunces Tavern. And Fraunces Tavern serves both as a great restaurant it’s associated with the restaurant called Porterhouse today. So they sort of taken over much of the block. But it’s actually this very historical place that ties into the Revolutionary War. It was where George Washington gave his farewell address to the Continental army. And is just a fascinating place to visit because you realize that throughout your whole trip in New York, you’ll see wonderful new modern trendy things. And then you’ll come down here, you’ll realize, ” Oh right, New York was really essential to the starting of the country.” And it’s all in your same visit, which to me is a very profound thing. Plus, you can have a great drink there.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah. Love that. Jill, I want to talk to you a bit more about eating and going out, because it’s such a huge part of New York City. What are your top places for a night out?

Jill Zarin: There’s one in the subways, La Noxe is the name of that restaurant in the subway. Where you walk down, halfway down to the subway, and on the right side, there’s a door and it holds like 30 people, and I hear it’s hard to get in.

Nisreene Atassi: There you go.

Tom Meyers: Nissy, can I just throw out another one?

Nisreene Atassi: Go ahead, Tom. Yeah.

Tom Meyers: I mean if we’re talking like classic New York, you don’t get more classic in terms of eating than pizza.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah.

Tom Meyers: I mean, you absolutely cannot come to New York and not experience New York City pizza. And there are three that come to mind-

Nisreene Atassi: But which?

Tom Meyers: But which to choose?

Nisreene Atassi: Yes. Let’s go there. Let’s go there.

Tom Meyers: You could try one of three I’m going to throw out. You could go for perhaps the oldest. I always put an asterisk on this, Lombardi’s on Spring Street in Little Italy. Absolutely delicious. If you walk just a couple blocks up to Houston Street and then west a few blocks, on West Houston is Arturo’s coal- fired pizza-

Nisreene Atassi: Oh.

Tom Meyers: … which is a slightly different crust. It’s a little chewier, a little bubblier. Also incredibly delicious. And then if you go up a block onto Bleecker, and further west on the other side of 7th Avenue, you’ll get to John’s of Bleecker, which is another favorite New York City pizza institution. And that’s more of a classic pie. If you wanted to, in the same day, you could have three different pies.

Nisreene Atassi: Listen, don’t put anything past our listeners. They’ll do it. They’ll have those three slices of pizza. No problem whatsoever.

Tom Meyers: Oh, they don’t sell slices. You’ve got to get the whole pie.

Nisreene Atassi: You got to get the whole pie. Okay. Well now that’s a really big undertaking. You’re putting a lot of pressure on these guys. Okay.

Tom Meyers: You do. You do.

Greg Young: You got to do a lot of walking, got a lot of carbs.

Nisreene Atassi: When we were doing the Boston episode, we were talking about how I love to literally just walk from neighborhood to neighborhood. Every time you get to a new neighborhood, you stop and you grab a little bit of something to eat. It works a lot better when you’ve got somebody with you to sort of share things with. But that’s the best way, because you’re walking and eating and experiencing all of it, which is my kind of travel.
Do you have a favorite hotel that you would recommend to our listeners?

Jill Zarin: I love the Mark. My boyfriend, he wanted to do something romantic, I think it was my birthday or something. He took me to a hotel in Brooklyn, but not in a fancy part, not in like Brooklyn Heights or anything. The William Vale Hotel, the two or three blocks that it sits in, you would think that you were in another city. All boutique, restaurants in hotels, it was the coolest hotel room and had a huge terrace outside with a magnificent view of Manhattan. And I was like, ” Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m on vacation.” That was a real staycation.

Nisreene Atassi: Greg, Tom, any sort of historic hotels that are your favorites?

Greg Young: My recommendation is to not spend very much time in your hotel room. Go to your hotel room to sleep, because there’s so much to do in the city. From that, you make your own decisions. So it’s like, ” Oh, should I stay in something small in a neighborhood that has so much to do? Or should I stay somewhere that’s very lavish that I can actually have an experience that’s unique to New York in the hotel.” So I guess what I’m saying is there’s a lot of hotels that are just like every other hotel in many cities. If you want to truly have a New York experience, try to stay in a more historic hotel in a more historic place. So for instance, the Knickerbocker Hotel actually in the heart of Times Square is a very glamorous, relatively new renovated place. It was also the place where the martini was, well, if not invented, the martini was improved there.

Nisreene Atassi: Okay, because I was going to say the birthplace of the martini is the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York. Fun fact.

Greg Young: No, no, no. It evolves into like three or four stages. We have a whole show on the history of cocktails and it’s-

Nisreene Atassi: Okay.

Greg Young: … there’s a Parisian connection. But when it got to the Knickerbocker, there was a very famous bartender who made a couple changes that many of us do enjoy in our cocktails today.

Nisreene Atassi: Okay. We’ll link to that. We’ll link to that, because that feels really important for my listeners.

Greg Young: So anyway, so that’s one angle. I would also suggest maybe a smaller boutique hotel in a neighborhood like DUMBO. DUMBO is a Brooklyn neighborhood. It’s a acronym for Down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. It’s where the bridges of Manhattan kind of pour into Brooklyn. It’s a very small neighborhood, but it is concentrated with nightlife, and restaurants, and shops. It’s really easy to get to and you’ll spend your whole day just walking around that area. So just getting a small room in a boutique neighborhood, that’s like very small and contained like that, I think is another suggestion.

Nisreene Atassi: Okay.

Tom Meyers: I like classic spots with history. We’ve actually done podcast episodes on the history of the Plaza Hotel and also the Waldorf Astoria, which would be another one to consider. Neither of these obviously is a cheap option. The Waldorf hosts presidents, for example. On the other end of the budget would be the Jane Hotel, which is a hotel that’s located down in the Meat Packing District. And it’s inside what used to be called an SRO, a single room occupancy, sort of like public housing or public assisted housing, very low cost housing for people who can afford it. So they have very, very small rooms, most of which have shared bathrooms. But an extremely sort of upscale setting. So there’s a really nice bar and there’s good things to eat there. This sort of surprising swanky scene in an otherwise formerly modest building.

Nisreene Atassi: This series is called ‘ Only In’, because we want to talk about the things that are really specific to a destination. So in your mind, what are things you can only eat, see, or do in New York?

Tom Meyers: Absolutely, before you get here, get a map of the city, and figure out a walk that would work for you. You can take the philosophy of just arriving and just going for it. But I really do think because it’s such a wonderfully, walkable city, or bikeable city, and you can cover distances on city bikes. You could get a one day city bike and really cover some distance. And then explore in between short bike rides. But at the end of the day, if you’re not in a Broadway theater, or you’re not in a great restaurant that you’ve been waiting to go to, or you’re not just kind of like walking along 5th Avenue and just soaking it all up, I would strongly suggest getting to a very high place. Going high. It’s a cliche, but for good reason. Going to the top of the Empire State Building or top of Rockefeller Center, top of the new Hudson Yards, top of One World Observatory. Getting up so that you can really get perspective on this place that you’ve just walked.

Nisreene Atassi: Oh, classic. Jill, what about you? What are some of your New York exclusive experiences?

Jill Zarin: There’s two places I would want someone to take a picture of Manhattan. One is definitely at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Magnificent. The secret place to go is if you go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 88th and 5th Avenue, they have a private restaurant upstairs, which is like members only, but it’s really not even that expensive to become a member. So if you come to New York a lot it’s totally worth it. The most incredible restaurant with the view of Central Park and the city. When you get to that private restaurant, there are stairs that take you upstairs, and you go almost to the top of the museum and you have the most incredible view of Manhattan right in the middle of Central Park. So imagine being able to stand on top of Central Park, and take a 360 around. It’s really quite a scene.

Nisreene Atassi: Oh, that’s a good tip. Okay.

Jill Zarin: For sure. Broadway. There’s nothing like Times Square, Chinatown, Little Italy, NoHo, that whole area. Certainly if you come during the fall, you can go to the Festival San Gennaro’s feast. I play tennis, so for any sports enthusiasts, tennis in Central Park, but there were other sports there as well. But definitely a walk through the park. There’s an ice skating rink there. There’s this merry- go- round. And I had my daughter’s third birthday party at the puppet theater. There was a little puppet theater on the Upper West Side in the park that holds about 20 kids. Nobody knows about it. Trust me. It’s really, and it’s amazing.

Shopping, of course, 5th Avenue, Madison Avenue. There’s nothing like walking all around there and you can even get on the Today Show if you do it early enough, and walk by 49th Street and Rockefeller Center. And food wise, besides every great chef in the world being here, get a bagel and a piece of pizza, and you’re all set.

Nisreene Atassi: Yeah, there we go. Love that. Greg, what about you? What have you got for us.

Greg Young: Before you go, New York has so much to offer that really this determined, what are you particularly interested in? Are you in to theater? History? Are you in to like black culture? Are you in to architecture? There’s like a million things that you can just specifically create a trip for yourself that would be so rewarding in any of those categories. New York has everything to offer and there’s not really a wrong answer unless of course you just stay inside all day. Don’t do that. But even in the winter, there is some areas of New York City that looked the best in the winter.

Tom Meyers: You can visit New York every year, every six months, and not be bored because there is always going to be something new.

Nisreene Atassi: Amazing. Love it. Greg and Tom, thank you so much for bringing New York’s past and present to life here on Out Travel the System.

Greg Young: Yes, thanks, it’s been great. Have a great New York week.

Tom Meyers: Thank you so much for having us.

Nisreene Atassi: Greg Young and Tom Meyers are the co- hosts of the podcast Bowery Boys. Jill Zarin is a design entrepreneur at jillzarin.com and jillandally.com. She is also an original Real Housewife of New York. Thank you so much for coming on the show with us today, Jill.

Jill Zarin: I just want to thank you so much for having me, give the listeners a discount code to my new website that I just re- launched jillzarin.com. And the code is OTTS15, 15% off anything on the site.

Nisreene Atassi: Amazing. Thank you so much, Jill. I’m Nisreene Atassi, and this is Out Travel the System, brought to you by Expedia. Happy travels.

Nisreene Atassi: Out Travel the System is brought to you by Expedia. Our showrunner and executive producer is Claudia Kwan. Our associate producer is Katie Doten, with sound engineering from Jill Constantine. Additional production support is provided by JAR Audio.

Show links: Expedia // Jill’s links: jillzarin.com , jillandally.com// The Bowery Boys: boweryboyshistory.com // Expedia Social Media: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook

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