Monday morning, Hannah & I were up fairly early. We had to be in Battery Park by 8:30am. FYI, learn the subway system if you ever go to NYC. It's cheaper than taxi cabs. Taxi's are easy but the Subway is only $2.00 one way or you can get a 24 hr pass that's good for $7.00. I can see how it would take some practice but you could zip all over the place in 24 hrs for ONE price.We saw a speed boat on the water that kept going back n' forth between us & another tourist looking boat. It had a gunner on it....complete with high power machine gun. I breathed a slight sigh of relief when I saw that it said, "Coast Guard" on the side of the boat. Since 9/11, everyone's scared to death that Lady Liberty will get attacked. (I have a vision of her slapping the hell out of anybody that tries to harm her!)
Hannah took photos of the wall that they have on Ellis with names on it. Of course, most of you already know about the website you can surf to find your ancestors that came over. I've known about it for a long time but never really taken the time to look at it. I had a great aunt that did a lot of research. Just from looking at me...you see German, but we came from Scotland also, & apparently, we have a lot of Cherokee in us. We did the photos in front of the statue & I bought a super cool Statue of Liberty shirt that I'm wearing on the 4th of July to the fireworks. :)In Battery Park, there were people dressed up as Lady Liberty for photo ops. We didn't get our pic taken with them but I snapped a quick photo of one of them.
Incidentally, on our 5.5 hr SUPER informative bus tour, the guide told us that Lady Liberty was assembled in Madison Square Park. He even held up an old photo of the workers working on the torch in the park. (Madison Square Garden used to be in or near Madison Square Park but as you all probably know, it's right next door to Penn Station not far from the "famous" Macy's. The name was too famous to change after moving.)The Sex & the City tour was everything the website said it would be & more...
BTW, on both bus tours we managed to snag seats at the front of the bus. The guides would announce that you need to keep your initial seats so we lucked up! Our bus was PACKED! We had plenty of husbands & boyfriends on there, too. Most of the tours were all sold out. There were people standing in line hoping they could come on board as stand by.
Our SATC tour guide was a young comedian named Amy Albert. (most of the SATC tour guides are actors and/or comedians. She's been an extra on "Law & Order" many times) She gave us a ton of behind the scenes facts about the show & even did a VERY short reenactment of what she does on "Law & Order". She was a hoot!
Amy started the tour with getting us to all say a dirty word that "Samantha Jones" used a lot on the show. ha! This tour is every bit 3 hours long. We drove past a lot of the hots spots featured on the show. We took a walking tour in the West Village which started in a park. (NYC is FULL of little parks tucked everywhere. It's not the concrete jungle some people think it is...if you limit yourself to one little section of Manhattan, of course you will ONLY see concrete. duh!)
We walked past Carrie's stoop featured in the show but you were not allowed to take photos. We had to stay on the other side of the road, too. The stoop belongs to a private residence, of course. Since the release of the movie, it's been CRAZY insane in this area. So crazy that the guide didn't bother telling us until we all boarded the bus to leave the West Side that Sarah Jessica Parker actually does live right around the corner from the famous stoop. She said she didn't want us all running around there screaming for SJP. ha! I snuck a pic of the stoop with my cell. Sorry but I'm not going to come all the way to the city, pay for this tour, & NOT get a photo of a stoop that was made famous on one of my FAVORITE shows. :P
We were dropped off at the Pleasure Chest on the tour, which was really tiny. On the show, the store looked much bigger. Of course, we were not walking out of that place without making some purchases! ha! 
On the tours, we did catch a glimpse of the "Soup Nazi" kitchens made famous on Seinfeld. They were actually called something else but because of time constraints we never did get to go into one to get soup. (NEXT TRIP for sure, I will get soup.) We were served delicious cup cakes from the Magnolia cup cake shop featured on SATC. They were good. Hannah got chocolate & I got a creamy vanilla with light green icing. We shared. That's the great thing about this trip.....sharing. The three of us being together & having fun made this trip so special. (I know that Cheryl & Hannah got some pictures that I didn't so I will more than likely add photos in a few days from them.)
****How appropriate, SJP is on "The View" as I do this blog this morning. :P
Our last stop on the tour was the bar owned by Steve on the show. It's called, "Scout" after Steve's dog on the show, but the real name is "O'Neal's Speakeasy". Amy gave us time to walk around the neighborhood while she got our cupcakes for us in the park but she also gave us time in the bar, too. We all had cosmopolitan martinis. (I know this is hard for you all to believe but I actually ONLY drank 4 martini's while in the city! ha!)
On the SATC tour, we saw a lot of the same things that we had seen the day before on the LONG bus tour, which I'll blog about later. If you are a fan of SATC, this tour should be a must do for you when you go to the city. They also have a "Soprano's" tour & several others. Amy pointed out a few of the places where the stars from the "Soprano's" lived. William Dafoe, also, lives near SJP in the West Village. Amy gave us background facts about all 4 SATC ladies. For instance, I knew SJP grew up poor. Her family was on welfare at one time. Kristin Davis is originally from Colorado & never did set up permanent residence in NYC. She was the only one from the 4 girls that kept permanent residence in L.A. She almost didn't get the role of Charlotte because of her bad girl image on "Melrose Place". As we passed the buildings where the girls filmed various scenes, it was a bit surreal to me. I watched a rerun last night VERY closely just to see where they were while filming.
Amy also pointed out that there is a major glitch in the opening credits of SATC, where SJP gets splashed on the street by a bus. The bus is full before she gets splashed but it's totally empty when the camera hits it after she's been splashed. The tour would show us clips before or after we'd seen a sight on the street. (Just cool!)
After the SATC tour ended, we had to jump in a cab & get to the overpriced Mesa Grill. I wasn't that impressed in more ways than one. ha! Don't get me wrong, the food was good but I've had better in Murfreesboro. After dinner, we headed to the comedy club called "Gotham". It was fun but I was very tired. I can now say I've done a NYC comedy club & won't do it again. They had a series of up & coming comics who have been on "Comedy Central" do their bits. There was one big lady that started to get on my nerves with her act so right after she got off stage, we went back to the hotel. If you are into clubs like that & visit NYC, be prepared to pay out the butt for the 2 drink minimum. (3 people + 6 drinks = $70 with tip) Sorry, not doing that again ever...
June 30th had ended & man was I tired!
June 29th, Sunday.....next.
