Top 15 Things To Do in Staten Island, New York

Staten Island's shoreline is a study in contrasts: industrial shipyards and soaring suspension bridges meet quiet salt marshes and sandy spits. Boat tours here range from free, commuter-style crossings to intimate wildlife cruises, sunset sails, and chartered fishing trips. They’re the best way to read the region’s maritime story—Statue of Liberty vistas, Narrows engineering, migrant birds in spring, and unexpected pockets of solitude beneath an enormous urban skyline.

Where the pulse of the city meets marsh and shoreline, Staten Island is a compact laboratory of water-based adventure. From paddleboarding in protected harbors and surfable breaks on the South Shore to guided estuary paddles and urban sailing lessons, the borough offers short, accessible trips that feel far removed from Manhattan’s skyline. This guide focuses on how to plan time on the water here—seasonality, access points, local hazards, and linked experiences that expand a day on the water into a full coastal outing.

Staten Island’s bike tours combine surprising solitude with salt-air coastline, parkland singletrack, and long, rider-friendly shorelines. From family-friendly promenades alongside South Beach to gravel and mixed-surface excursions through the Greenbelt, the borough is a mosaic of routes that reward curiosity — and the short ferry hop from Manhattan makes it one of New York’s most accessible day-ride escapes.

From flat waterfront promenades to wide park drives and surprisingly quiet residential lanes, Staten Island is a low-key place to roll. This guide focuses on renting bikes and turning them into a day of exploration—ferry hops, salt-air rides, park loops, and longer shoreline circuits—plus practical advice on terrain, equipment choices, and timing.

Staten Island offers a maritime doorway into the complex waterways of New York Harbor — short sails that feel wild, skyline vistas that read like a postcard, and working channels where ferries and freighters remind you this is a harbor with history and heft. This guide focuses on sailing experiences launching from Staten Island: sheltered bay jaunts, day sails into Raritan Bay, harbor circumnavigations that frame Manhattan from the water, and learning-the-ropes charters ideal for new sailors.

A compact, tide-driven fishing landscape tucked into New York Harbor, Staten Island offers a surprising variety of angling: surfcasting off long cobbled beaches, pier and jetty fishing for summer fluke and bluefish, quiet back-bay sessions for flounder and striped bass, and nearby party-boat runs into Raritan Bay. Currents and tides dominate the experience here—fishing success is as much about timing as technique. Whether you’re dropping bait from a family-friendly pier or anchoring for an evening striper bite under the Verrazzano lights, Staten Island delivers accessible, city-adjacent saltwater fishing with immediate reward.

Staten Island's bus tours are a study in surprising contrasts: coastal panoramas next to quiet residential streets, reclaimed landfill turned parkland, and maritime landmarks that feel a world away from Manhattan's skyline. Whether you want a short hop-on hop-off loop that spices a ferry trip with neighborhood context, a themed historical tour tracing Revolutionary-era sites, or an ecology-focused ride into Freshkills Park and the South Shore, buses deliver a relaxed, accessible way to read the borough's layers without getting lost in transit logistics.

Staten Island sits at a seam of metropolitan waterfronts and quiet estuaries, making it an unexpectedly nimble base for boat rentals. From sheltered bays tucked behind barrier islands to open-water runs under monumental bridges, renting a boat here gives you access to skyline views, working waterfronts, and wide salt-marsh edges that feel a world away from Midtown. This guide focuses on the practical and sensory: what the water looks and feels like, when to go, what kinds of craft work best, and how to plan trips that pair well with fishing, shoreline hikes, and island picnics.

Staten Island sits at the quiet edge of one of the world’s busiest skylines—and that contrast is the promise of its air activities. From low-slung scenic helicopter flights that thread the Verrazzano Narrows to calm, weather-dependent small‑aircraft and seaplane approaches over Raritan Bay, the borough is less about adrenaline than perspective: wide harbor sweeps, industrial piers, the salt-scented shoreline, and a skyline that reads differently from each angle. This guide focuses on airborne ways to experience Staten Island’s geography—what you’ll see, when it’s best, and how to prepare—while pointing to complementary shoreline adventures, photography vantage points, and local logistics that shape the experience.

Staten Island folds city grit into surprisingly varied riding: a stitched landscape of waterfront promenades, forested gravel, low-traffic streets, and a ragged fringe of singletrack in the Greenbelt. For e-bikers the borough is a practical and playful playground — ideal for exploratory half-day rides, family-friendly cruises along the boardwalk, and longer battery-backed loops that stitch parks and ferry connections into a single day’s route.

Staten Island is a study in contrasts — a short ferry ride from Manhattan that leads into windblown shorelines, reclaimed industrial landscapes, quiet woodlands, and intimate cultural neighborhoods. For photographers the island offers cinematic skyline frames from the water, seasonal bird migrations in coastal marshes, textured layers in Freshkills Park’s expansive reclamation fields, and architectural details in Snug Harbor and Historic Richmond Town. Whether you’re hunting golden-hour cityscapes, doing wildlife telephoto work, or practicing long exposures on a windswept beach, Staten Island’s compact variety makes it an efficient and surprising day-trip destination.

Staten Island is often the quiet side of New York City, and that quiet is where its eco-tour strengths are hidden. From reclaimed industrial landscapes turned birding havens to tidal marshes and mature upland forests, the borough offers a compact but diverse palette for guided—and self-guided—eco experiences. These tours blend habitat interpretation, local conservation history, and accessible outdoor exploration, making Staten Island ideal for travelers who want nature within a cityscape.