Last Saturday afternoon, I went somewhere I've never been before — and I took six Nebraskans with me. Actually, five Nebraskans and one Nebraskan-by-marriage (a native of Kentucky), as well as a handful of transplanted and/or temporary New Yorkers: two Ohioans, a Pennsylvanian and a British guy in a blue blazer named Fergus Jarvis.

The 11 of us ventured somewhere most New Yorkers fear to tread: Staten Island. Until last week, when I thought of the island at all, I thought of it as one big ferry terminal, "that thing" out there in the harbor, or the unfortunate result of missing an exit in Brooklyn and winding up on the Verrazano Narrows bridge.

But my visitors were three game-for-anything high school friends and their husbands, and I wanted to take them on a tourist-worthy adventure that would be new for me and a draw for my New York friends, too. Everyone wanted to get up close to the Statue of Liberty, and the ferry is a free, peaceful way to do so — and something I've meant to do ever since I moved here. Plus, the weather promised to be beautiful. It was the perfect plan.

Most tourists, however, don't really drop anchor in the Staten Island harbor. It's the one borough out of five that most often gets left off the itinerary. Sightseers get off the boat for a moment, only because they have to, and then board again and head right back to Manhattan. But that's not much of an adventure for anyone, tourist or native. Plus, it seems a little futile and a little tame —the aquatic equivalent of an aimless Sunday drive.

So we needed a destination. There's a minor league baseball team in Staten Island, but they don't start playing until summer. That left only one option: pizza. Legend has it that Staten Island is home to excellent pizza. A couple of food blogs concur, namely chowhound.com and sliceny.com (the latter a wonder devoted entirely to pizza-eating in the five boroughs). On Chowhound, one response to the posted query "best pizza in any borough?" was simply "Staten Island," then a list of four restaurants. I nosed around online. Of the leading candidates, the one that was initially most intriguing —Lee's Tavern, home of superior grub and out-of-the-way charm —was also said to have "frosty bartenders and gaping denizens."

Denino's seemed like a safer bet: Great pizza, friendly service, a Staten Island fixture for more than 50 years.

So it was settled. Miraculously, everyone made it to the ferry terminal in time to catch the 4:30 boat. The weather was fine; the views were spectacular. But our 11 were strewn all over the ferry; some outside, some inside, some upstairs, some down. I began to fret a little, realizing I had no idea how to get the group to the restaurant once we docked, nor had I ever spoken with a real human being who had actually eaten there. Suddenly, this seemed like quite a big risk for a hostess to take.

The Staten Island Railway (the one subway line), wasn't running. After asking three different people, we found the (unmarked, and empty) taxi stand. Eventually, something more or less resembling a taxi showed up, though it had one passenger already inside. We waited, politely, for him to get out, but soon it became apparent that in Staten Island, carpooling isn't just for personal transportation. One third of our party hopped in and zoomed off. Our other two drivers cheerfully offered to squeeze in up to six passengers, a stark contrast to Manhattan and Brooklyn cabbies, who will never, ever take more than four people.

During our ride around the perimeter of the island, sea breeze wafting through the cab windows, we passed regal, historic homes that seemed now to be some kind of museum or cultural center. We passed run-down bungalows. We passed front yards full of rusting car parts and shipyards full of gigantic, rusting boats. We passed ditches full of trash and ditches full of thousands of daffodils. Except the hulking ships, everything was on a smaller scale than in other boroughs: no high rises, lots of freestanding homes. Even the public housing projects were small, tidy and self-contained.

Fifteen minutes later, we were all reassembled at Denino's.

Though none of us had ever been there, most of us recognized it right away. As a couple of people remarked, the place felt like a favorite small-town hangout from "back home": video games in the entryway, long, Formica-topped tables, a jukebox full of Hank Williams and albums like "Jock Jams #4." Somebody's sweet, long-suffering grandma manned the hostess stand, doling out extra napkins and forks.

The most small-town thing about it, though, was the price. The bill, for 11 very full and pleasantly drunk people, was $87, before tip.

Ultimately, the pizza was just OK. And the trip didn't really demystify Staten Island. One third of our team had a genial cabdriver from Morocco who chatted them up with local lore, but after all those affordable pitchers of beer, my reporting got a little sloppy and I never acquired the details.

I'll admit that at one point during the journey, when I honestly wasn't sure whether we were going to end up eating at the restaurant or swimming with the fishes, I regretted dragging everyone on this odyssey instead of simply taking them to Franny's, my new favorite pizza spot in my home borough of Brooklyn. Or Grimaldi's, a gem at the tip of the Brooklyn Bridge, or Lombardi's, at the north end of Manhattan's Little Italy, or John's, on Bleecker. Any of them would have provided a foolproof meal, and, as SliceNY.com might have told me, had I dug a little deeper, quite possibly a superior crust, a better cheese-to-sauce ratio, a higher quality of sausage.

But on the return ferry at twilight, Brooklyn and Manhattan winking and bustling in the distance, I looked at my 10 friends of various eras and origins, now sitting all together on the worn wooden benches, talking and laughing. And I let out a long breath and smiled.

Kelly Bare is a writer and editor in New York. She can be reached at kellybare76@yahoo.com.