We sat here today!
This morning Mark and I took advantage of a quiet sleep in and headed up to the garment district for a 4 hour tour of Sopranos locations, a great activity to break up a trip to New York!
We visited sites from the opening credits as well as popular locations from the 6-part series, we also met the actor who played 'Vito,' who was busy flogging merchandise to us from the boot of his car.
We drove past Pizzaland, which is shown in the opening sequence, and they'll even fedex you one of their pizzas! (Not sure how it would taste once it makes it to Australia...)
One highlight was a visit to Holstein's Diner, where the very last scene of The Sopranos was filmed. We also got a chance to sample their famous Onion Rings and get a photo taken in the booth Tony was sitting in when it all ended. Too bad the man I asked to take our photo took a hopeless shot where you see nothing except for our faces!
Did you know that HBO made approximately $1 billion from The Sopranos? The tour also had great trivia and tips, and answered all of Mark's tricky production questions without skipping a beat.
It was great to have a chance to see small town New Jersey, and the day ended with a real-live visit to Tony Soprano's Strip Club 'Bada-Bing!' The funny part is it is actually an operating strip club called 'Satin Dolls,' and it was open for business, and full of clientele when we were there! We watched the girls dance on the poles and bought merchandise from the back storeroom, before heading back to Manhattan.
If you are a fan of The Sopranos and you make it to New York, I really recommend the tour! You can look at the tours here - they also do The Sex in the City tours of New York as well.
Since coming to New York, we have found all of these resources that I wish we had seen when we were back in Sydney planning! So I am going to plonk them down here, so they don't get lost again.
- I LOVE NEW YORK The official New York State Tourism Website. I particularly love the daily 'foliage report' for Fall, that will tell you where the leaves are changing colour.
- Time Out New York if I had followed Time Out more closely before arriving I would have realised that Nick Cave and Beck amongst others were playing while I was here, and I could have organised tickets, bummer.
- And as I have said before, book early. Hotel rooms don't get cheaper, they simply get booked out. Last-minute deals don't seem to be the flavour of the month here.
That's all for now, we leave New York for Pennsylvania tomorrow, we have to go to Newark to pick up our car first thing. It will be so sad to say goodbye, New York is my kind of city for so many reasons!
xx