A fishing town at heart, Montauk is regarded as a relic of Long Island's less commercial days—when you could set up shop on a duney strip of beach with nothing but sand and sea, and certainly no crowds, in sight. The trip to the island's eastern-most point, known to locals as "the End," takes about three hours by train from Manhattan—a small price to pay for the scenes that await. A wide path of soft white sand slithers up the coastline next to soaring jagged bluffs and seagrass-covered dunes as surfers dot the crashing Atlantic waves. A dreamy mist rises from the coastline which, combined with the cliffs, makes you wonder for a moment if the train has taken an unannounced detour to the West Coast. While Montauk is certainly a tourist destination, with urban restaurants, shops and crowds beginning to infiltrate the quiet milieu, it's still one of the only seaside enclaves where you can completely escape New York's frenetic energy for the day and still make it back to the city in time for dinner. But you'll be hard-pressed to leave this coastal jewel once you arrive.