Unless you’re a New Yorker who’s really into IKEA, you probably don’t know about this great free ferry travel tour.
Visit IKEA Brooklyn on a free ferry on Weekends
We discovered this purely by accident. We walked around and ended up on Pier 11, where all the fairies leave to head over to various parts of Brooklyn. We discussed whether to take one of those and decided to check out the pricing. That’s when we heard them calling to load up for the ferry to IKEA. We looked around, and they were. People getting onto the ferry and signs that made it very clear that this was a free trip.
It was getting on in the day, and the schedule indicated that two more ferries would return, so we decided to head over there.
The original plan was to turn around and come back and enjoy the free ferry ride across from Manhattan to South Brooklyn. But we realized we had a good hour on our hands and, as usual, we hadn’t had lunch one of our favourite meals is Swedish meatballs at IKEA.
So that’s what we did. We had about an hour to have a quick meal and go through IKEA rapidly to return to the ferry on time.
That would’ve been it, and it would’ve been a lovely little trip, but on our journey back, we discovered that they dropped people off at Pier 11 and then went on around the coast of downtown Manhattan and made their way up to Pier 79.
So we stayed on, made our way around, and had some fantastic sites on the skyline of New York City.
Just as Pier 31 provides the fairies across to Brooklyn, around Pier 79 is where all the tour cruises leave. From here, picking up a bus to head home was easy.
This is a great half-day outing that doesn’t cost you a dime except maybe a couple of bus tickets to and from the piers. And remember, if you’re over 65, you can get an MTA temporary pass, and all your costs on the system will be half-price.
You could pick it up on Pier 79 and journey south, but our route gave us a better view of the city.
This is a better trip than the Staten Island free ferry, which takes you relatively close to the Statue of Liberty. There’s nothing on Staten Island, so you want to turn around and come back where is an IKEA time.