> Enjoy the view etc, and then the second stage relights to cancel your velocity to 0
That is not feasible. Your second stage would have to be roughly as large as an entire orbital rocket in order to slow itself down from orbital speeds to zero, which means your first stage would have to be massive in order to push the second stage into orbit.
The reason every vehicle that re-enters the atmosphere uses a heat shield is because it's way easier to carry a relatively light heat shield that sheds off the speed than to carry the massive amount of fuel to shed off the same speed.