Jersey City

I recently joked that I was running out of things to do in New York, so I needed to expand my radius. Of course this will never really be true because New York City is huge and constantly changing. However, as I become more comfortable living here and exploring different neighborhoods, it would make sense that my exploration area would be ever expanding. I had an entire sunny Sunday free recently, and decided to use it to venture over the Hudson into New Jersey.

Of course I've been to New Jersey before, but I'd never taken the PATH train. It was easy enough to figure out (you can use your MetroCard!) and I was surprised at how quickly I got from lower Manhattan to Jersey City. I had a loose itinerary for the day, which began with a stop at the VIP Diner. It had everything I look for in a diner—original furnishings, excellent signage, a friendly waitstaff and cheap, filling breakfast. From the diner I headed to check out a Muffler Man and a cemetery (more on those later), before making my way back east to downtown Jersey City and the waterfront.

The "Historic Downtown" area of Jersey City actually looked like a movie set to me—complete with generically named shops like "Hardware" and "Dry Cleaners." I stopped in a cute bookstore to browse, drank my weight in iced tea and marveled at the cute PATH entrances. It was very, very hot, but I was still surprised to find the streets so empty on a weekend afternoon, but it was a nice break from the sweaty, crowded sidewalks of the city.

I found out that New Jersey has a light rail when I almost got run over by it as I was crossing the street. I tried to ride to Liberty Park but I wasn't aware of the weekend service schedule so I had to get off after going just one stop, but it was worth it to experience yet another form of transportation (I have a seriously nerdy obsession with all of the varying forms of public transit).

It's funny to me that you have to go to New Jersey (or Brooklyn, or Queens) to really see Manhattan, and one of the best parts about Jersey City is the incredible skyline view. The neon view as you descend the escalator at the Exchange Place PATH station is pretty wonderful too, although it's still not quite enough to make me consider defecting west of the Hudson just yet.