The "Local" Spots

magnoliasMy copy of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” is now scattered with highlighter, pen and pencil circling the numerous on-point travel quotations that I could easily relate to. One of my favorite quotations is the following from page 82:

“We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte’s restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it in the American Women’s Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for a table.”

This got me to thinking that when traveling, a main goal is often to experience the “real” life of the destination, rather than follow the tourist’s must-see itinerary. But once a small place, stumbled upon after a few hours of aimless wandering, is discovered and publicized, it often loses its magic.
This feeling of over-publicized “favorites” is recognizable all over the New York City. Take a look at “The Insider’s guide to New York” and I guarantee that you have been to a fair amount of these places and been surrounded by tourists (although some may camouflage better than others). The example that popped into my head first was Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker. It started out as a bakery too small to efficiently make bread, and thus became a neighborhood cupcake stop. Quickly the world took notice, and after being declared the best cupcake in New York by so many and it’s staring role in SNL’s digital short Lazy Sunday we can now expect a line up around the corner any day, rain or shine. I’d say, if you really want to experience a city opt for some aimless wandering and take a chance by going to places you haven’t heard of a million times over, you never know, you might just stumble upon a better cupcake.