In honor of the NSOP neighborhood tours, which begin today and continue through Monday, we’re providing you a list of old posts describing some of our trips to various places in NYC. Maybe they’ll help you pick a tour — or maybe they’ll inspire you to take your own, self-guided tour of this incredible city that is now your home.

Brooklyn
Brooklyn: One big room full of bad hipsters?
“However, if you’re looking for somewhere scenic, cool, and new to explore, Park Slope’s an awesome place.”

Some people (read: several people) didn’t find our jokes at Brooklyn’s expense amusing, and one of them even wrote the next post on offer here in response…

What you’re missing about Park Slope
“It’s also walking distance to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, as well as BAM (the oldest continuously operating theater in America). Red Hook and its art spaces aren’t far away. Within the neighborhood proper are tons of restaurants and a few places to hear live music. There’s also local favorite Community Books—one of the city’s most important bookstores…”

In short, Brooklyn’s a cool place to check out. As long as you promise never to ever make a joke about their neighborhoods.

Queens
PS1 makes going to Queens worth it: “I found walking around the Long Island City section of Queens to be refreshing—in its normalcy, that is—with its graffiti everywhere (think Fresh Prince of Bel Air intro, not Banksy), dripping bridges, crappy diners, people wearing flannel non-ironically.”

The Met
Mixed-up at the Met
“I wandered through the Egyptian collection. Although I’m usually not much of a sucker for history, the artifacts absolutely astounded me. Being inside part of a tomb and having the hieroglyphics right in front of me was incredible.”

There are also lots of other museums in the area (not that you’ll have time — a visit to the Met can easily suck up an entire day), and if you get tired of being indoors with such nice weather outside, Central Park is right there as well.

Chelsea
Chelsea doesn’t have any stereotypes to joke about
“There’s really something for everyone.”

Pro-tip: while you’re in Chelsea, you should check out the High Line. It’s a beautiful old elevated rail line that has been turned into a park. Currently there’s a bit of controversy attached to the project, and some people are even running around posting up anti-tourist fliers. Just ignore them. The park was built with public money and the faux bohemians of West Chelsea don’t get to keep it to themselves.

Another of our writers recommended Chelsea Market: “Is meat, coffee, gelato, or chocolate what you crave? Covered. Do you ever feel like a nice salt and oil sampling session would be a great pick-me-up? Well, you’re in luck, weirdo, because the market has one of these too.”

Chinatown
Adventures in wasting time but not money
One of our writers took a trip to Prosperity Dumpling: “You aren’t going to find super cheap five-dollar scarves or a row of adorable Asian bakeries right next to this restaurant. There was, however, a school named after Sun Yat-sen, as well as a ton of cheap fruit carts.”

Times Square
Despite what you may have heard, there are some cool things here: “We decided to go to Caffebene, a South Korean coffee chain, to grab a bite. I ended up ordering a Misugaru Latte and a waffle topped with fig jam, almonds, and ricotta cheese…”