New York apartment rental holiday: the Big Apple for less

Renting a local apartment can often make for a more authentic experience than a stay in a hotel – as Teresa Machan found in New York

Comments

It’s Saturday morning and I’m up among the rooftop water tanks drinking coffee in the late-October sunshine. Alfresco, in my pyjamas, my heart sings. I could have chosen a former sugar warehouse on Manhattan with views of the Hudson, or a chic Chelsea condo, but edgy, gritty Brooklyn, just one subway stop across the East River from Manhattan, seemed just the place to make like a New Yorker in my very own pied-à-terre.

Things hadn’t gone so well the previous evening, however. Exiting the Long Island Expressway from JFK, my cab driver had simply drawn a blank. With no map or satnav and little command of English, he was guided through the city’s second largest borough by his brother, via mobile. Arriving at Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill district around 10pm, we set about circling the one-way system three times. I didn’t recognise Bond Street from the pretty sweep of Brooklyn brownstones I’d seen on the onefinestay.com website and the driver made an attempt to drop me at the grill of a disused warehouse.

Ordinarily, a “greeter” from onefinestay would have been waiting at the door of the property with keys, but my friend and co-sharer, Jane, had flown in a few hours earlier and had done the meet and greet. In desperation I texted her. “At a bar called Seersucker on Smith Street,” she texted back. “Come here?”

Fatigued and full of cold, I declined, so she came and flagged us down at the cross street as we looped and let me in using the easiest, idiot-proof colour-coded key system in the world (relief: no sticky locks or capricious doors) and headed back to her cocktail.

The apartment had immediate wow factor, but all I sought was a glass of water, a box of tissues and bed. High and low I hunted for a glass, finding all manner of cooking implements, a dinner service to feed 50 and enough washing powder and tissues to withstand an attack by Kim Jong-un. but nary a glass or mug in sight. I filled a very large Pyrex jug and hit the sack.