Embrace Your Inner Tourist, Ride A Double Decker Bus Around Manhattan

Believe it or not, those bus tours of New York that dudes in Midtown try to sell you on are not as organized as they look. They’re actually kind of a pain in the ass.

First, you have to Google which bus company to use. For better or for worse, there is no double decker bus tour monopoly. You then buy your oddly expensive ticket online, but it is not actually ticket: it’s a voucher. You then have print out your voucher somewhere because you probably don’t own a printer. You then go to one of their 13 locations around the city (which all have different operating hours) and exchange your voucher for a ticket while the admittedly nice men behind the counter proceed to prod you about taking additional expensive tours (they have a Gossip Girl one).

You even have to ask where to catch the bus, because apparently they don’t think it is necessary to tell you. This would appear to be especially problematic for real tourists, but based on the fact that there are so many of these bus tours, I assume they just think you’ll find one and hop on eventually

The night tour is the least expensive option at around $39, with most daytime tours ranging from 44 to nearly 100 dollars. You can also buy a variety of weekend passes if you’re just really into this whole bus thing.

The night tour bus picked us up at Herald Square, though it picked everyone else up at Times Square. The guide gave us each a pair of red headphones with scratchy purple earbuds that kept falling out of my ears on the tour, making me miss what I’m sure was extremely valuable information. We were lucky to find two empty seats next to each other because you have to plug the earphones into the side of the bus and neither of us wanted to tangle cords with a stranger. We were also lucky that you can bring food on the tour, so we stocked up with mozzarella sticks, dollar pizza, and garlic knots.

I figured that the night tour would be more night-oriented. Maybe we would look at historic nightlife, pass by Stonewall Inn or see some of New York’s “finest” destinations (the Empire State Building) lit up. I was wrong. It was a generalized tour of New York under the darkness of dusk, which explained why it was cheaper than most other tours: it was the same damn tour, but you couldn’t see as well on this one.

After our first “New York Thing” (the Flatiron Building), the tour took us to go look at Parsons and then NYU where the tour guide proceeded to give us facts that every Welcome Week leader knows by heart. He seemed pretty proud of NYU, which was strange considering he was a native New Yorker. He knew all of the famous NYU alums by heart. He then pointed out that Halloween store on 8th Street near Cantor Film Center claiming it was the only Halloween store open all year round.

He is wrong.

We then sped off to Chinatown where he completely forgot to talk about the delicious food and instead talked about the history of Chinese and Italian immigrants in NYC. The tourists did not seem to be interested in this, but they were definitely interested in the “Welcome to Chinatown” sign.

The tour ventured over the Manhattan Bridge so the tourists could see how the Brooklyn Bridge lit up. My friend and I hadn’t expected to go to Brooklyn so we were pretty excited until the tour guide turned to us and said, “The only reason I come to Brooklyn is to look at Manhattan!” Zing!

He then went on to bash Brooklyn for a good half hour by telling us all the things that you can do in Manhattan instead of going to Brooklyn. He was from Queens, if that gives you some perspective on his leanings.

Once we were back in Manhattan, our tour guide went on with his random mix of architecture facts, historic food spots, and shopping streets. When we got off at Times Square, we were told we could keep our headphones as a souvenir. I couldn’t. Mine got stuck in a grate on the bus.

Highlights of the Adventure:

1) The lovely brown house located on top of a building at 13th and 3rd

2) An ill-advised police joke by our tour guide.

3) When we passed by a park near Chinatown, the man sitting in front of us yelled “CHUTA! CHUTA!” at some people playing soccer.

4) The part when the tour guide didn’t mention Tom Fruin’s stained glass water tower installation in Brooklyn but talked too much about glowing owl eyes on a statue in Herald Square.

5) The one street mural he pointed out that we weren’t given time to look at.

6) The tour guide’s joke about providing sexual services for tips.

7) The amazing breeze after a hot day in an AC-less apartment.

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