Fire Island

May 24th is officially the start of beach season in NY and all the trains and ferry services start, so we decided to brave it and head out to Fire Island.
I have to admit I kind of had Brighton in my head when I was imagining what we would find.
Fire Island is off Long Island, which really is just a big residential suburb of NYC, so I assumed it would be nice, but in a “not really a real beach” sort of way.

It took us 2.5 hours to get there, which sounds a lot but it was really easy. You buy a package ticket at Penn Station which takes you on the train, the bus to the ferry and the ferry to the island and its all incredibly efficient.

The island is very small, and no cars are allowed. There a few towns dotted a long it, each smaller and more remote than the other. We went to Ocean Beach, which is the biggest town and has a few restaurants and shops. We picked it because we expected that we would need things to do, after we had had a walk on the no-doubt pebbley beach.

At Ocean Beach the island basically splits in half, the north side which is on Long Island Sound has the one road which constitutes the town, and the little streets with all the houses run across the island to the south side which is on the Atlantic and is just beach.
And what a beach!
It was an honest to goodness holiday beach with proper sand and shells and sea, and then just a whole lot of nothing on the horizon.

And it was a gorgeous day, about 24 degrees with a light breeze, so we just plonked ourselves down on the beach, sunbathed until we were hungry, went up to the town and found a table overlooking the Sound and all the boats there for lunch, and then went back to the beach for more sunbathing.
At about 5 we started making our way back to the ferry, and we were home in time for dinner.

It was an incredible day out, it really felt like we had gone on holiday and next time we will definitely make a weekend of it and stay over. The whole place is so laid back and relaxed it would only take a weekend to feel like you’d been away forever.