The Best Things to Do on New York City's Governors Island

22.09.2023 - 15:55 / cntraveler.com

A recent visit to Governors Island came a few days after a conversation I’d had with my father in which he’d instructed me to act like a tourist in my own city. He’d started by asking simply how I was filling my summer weekends, and I answered honestly that most of my free time was spent reading in one park or another and going to bars in my Brooklyn neighborhood. “New York City,” he reminded me (with earnest intention to inspire, no righteousness detected), “has more things to do in it than you’ll be able to see in a lifetime.”

It’s early evening on a Friday when I board a private boat service that takes me from Tribeca to the island’s Yankee Pier. On Saturday afternoon, the public ferry would return me to Manhattan. The hours between are spent at an odd and serene remove from a city not a ten-minute ride away by water. What follows here is not an itinerary but a distillation of my experiences—pick the ones that work best for you.

The view of lower Manhattan from Governors Island on a sunny day

There are two primary options to make one’s way to Governors Island from the Island of Manhattan, and as mentioned above, I try them both. I get there via private charter, a Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat (RHIB, for short) captained by John Carter of Boatride NYC. Rates vary for similar services, but always exceed $100. Conversely, a round-trip ticket on a public ferry from numerous points in the city to Governors Island cost between $4 and $8. Running daily between the Battery Maritime Building and on weekends from Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge and Atlantic Basin in Red Hook, these trips take between 10 and 15 minutes.

Collective is the only place to stay on Governors Island.

Unless you’re a member of the program that brought a handful of Berlin-based artists to one of Governors Islands' long-disused Victorian houses, a night spent here is a night spent at Collective. That glamping has arrived, not merely in New York City but, technically, a borough of Manhattan is no small selling point—that most tents’ flaps frame, at one angle or another, Lady Liberty herself, isn’t either. I’d never glamped before, nor am I sure that I necessarily understand the distinction—most accommodations are built upon raised platforms, and all have bathrooms with running water, so there really isn’t much difference at all between this and a hotel room, beyond the flapping sounds of passing bat wings.

For the truly tent-averse, there are several rectangular accommodation units that dot its grounds, their interiors blond and Scandi and bigger than my apartment.

Collective has a full-service restaurant serving breakfast and dinner a la carte, as well as wine and beer all day, and complimentary s’mores in the evenings. Breakfast is fairly