Long Island was the first stop on our tour. We began by seeing family and mine’s there. Now most city people think of Long Island for two things, wineries and beaches. While those certainly have more appeal for day trips or a weekend getaway than a trip to Roosevelt Field Mall there are definitely other things to do while you’re on the Island as well.
Speaking of beaches a great way to do it without needing to find a friend with a car or rent one is to bike there. This one would probably be best with your own bike, since it’s kind of an all day thing, but you can take the LIRR out to Wantagh (about a 50 minute ride) and from the station there it is about a mile and a hafl ride down Wantagh Avenue to Cedar Creek Park where you’ll find a great 4 mile bike path that will take you straight to Jones Beach, crossing over Great South Bay and a bunch of the little islets in it.
As for wineries, there’s tons of websites listing details and rankings for them and I’m willing to bet you’ve got a friend who thinks they know a lot about wine with some opinions on them (maybe it’s me), but I’ll let you ask them yourself. I will take a second to plug Long Island Spirits, a place we found by accident when we were on a bus tour and found out the place we planned on eating our picnic lunch didn’t allow outside food. We decided to try out the distillery next door, despite it being 10°F outside. They were awesomely accommodating about our outside food and it turned out they have some amazing whiskey and gin, so two thumbs up.
I usually describe the demographics of my hometown as one third Irish, one third Italian, and one third Jewish. A bit of an oversimplification, but I’d be surprised if the margin of error on those stats was greater than 5% on any of them. What this means though is that in Levittown, (my hometown sort of, there’s a long story about postal codes there I won’t get into), and Long Island in general, there is a plethora of great Irish pubs, pizzerias/Italian restaurants, and delis/bagel stores and they are mostly top notch. A couple eateries I will call out specifically are Krisch’s an incredible old fashioned ice cream shop in Massapequa (try the rainbow cookie ice cream) and Dortonis, an Italian bakery in Levittown.
There’s some great malls and outlets if you’re into that sort of thing, but the only store we hit up really was REI in anticipation of all the camping we’ll do for the trip. I love that store, I could spend all day there, but it is ridiculously expensive. I saw yoga mats for over a hundred dollars, a rollable surface whose only purposes are to be cleaner and have a better grip than most floors. Still it is always fun to look around.
On the way out of Long Island we drove out east to take the Orient Point Ferry. It’s a very nice ride even if it’s not the most efficient way to get to New Hampshire. We got to stop off at a vineyard on the way, so that’s always good and buy some fresh strawberries from a farmstand. I love how different the North Fork can be from the rest of Long Island. But so long Long Island and off to adventure.
Bicoastal Surf 