With the tourists gone, we were able to experience the beauty of New York properly

New York in the summer, filled with tourists is exhausting, but this year with the tourists gone, we were able to experience the city as they saw it, and it was very nice indeed, writes Holly Baxter

A uniquely quiet boat excursion felt like an exclusive trip for those in the know (Holly Baxter)

Most New York City attractions become hellholes the second tourists descend on us in summer (which, non-coincidentally, is the same time there’s an exodus of the wise and the wealthy to Montauk, the Hamptons, small-town Connecticut and the rest of upstate New York from the crowded apartments of Manhattan.) Going outside in the soupy air of July and August is a challenge in itself; most of us who are not wise or wealthy stay glued to the face of the AC unit blasting frigid air into our box-sized studios, and occasionally take turns to crawl to the nearest grocery store for sustenance. Nobody wants to battle the crowds of eager, sun-starved Brits on top of that, the ones who’ll happily climb up the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building in hundred-degree weather, their “I <3 NY” T-shirts soaked in sweat and their faces puce with effort.

I was one of those Brits once, just happy to see a bit of sunshine after seven months of grey rain, starstruck by the towering high-rises and knocked sideways by the quality of the Mexican food. Then one day I woke up and I was a New Yorker: last year I travelled back to the UK for three months in August and actually uttered the words, “I love how cold and rainy it is.” A few days ago, I told my fiance I thought it was “nice and overcast”. Such phrases should be alien to anyone who grew up on the rainiest island since Ireland, but they quickly become part of your repertoire when you live in the Big Apple.

 But that little slice of somebody else’s New York normality was surprisingly lovely. We’re just keeping the seats warm until global travellers return