Our last day in New York was just as packed or more than all the other days. It started off with an NBC Studio Tour at 9:30am. We had to pick up our tickets ahead of time, so we were there about 45 minutes beforehand. We walked through the store, which I got a Friends t-shirt and mug (yet to take pictures of...) and go some pictures in front of this lit up dome...
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| Google put our pictures together to make it move, how cool is that? |
We weren't able to take any pictures during the tour, so I'll just have to tell you what we saw! It started off with a video inside that dome providing a bit of history behind NBC. I discovered that NBC was started by RCA and that NBC owns way more than I knew! Next we moved onto the Night News with Brian Williams studio. That was interesting to see how they put on a new coverage and just the tricks behind the scenes. One of the most interesting things is that the studio has 300 lights, because they use the HD cameras, if there is even one shadow it can make a woman look like she has a beard or a man look like he's a different ethnicity! The lights raise the temperature about 20 degrees, so they have to pump in lots of cool air, which is dry refrigerated air, as air conditioning has too much moisture which would land on the camera lens.
Next they took us to the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's studio. Again, very neat to see how it is set up and how they put it on. It's a very small studio, apparently to make it look larger they flash from Jimmy to the audience to the band, instead of just moving the camera. Also, it was not his normal set, as his normal set is getting renovated for him to take over Jay Leno's show.
Next we moved on to the Saturday Night Live studio. This one surprised me how small it really is, as I thought that they would have multiple stages to put on all the skits, but all they have is one stage for the skits called the "semi-permanent stage". I am even more impressed with how they are able to get the skits together in the short amount of time that they have!
The tour finished off by showing us the Broadcasting Operations Center, a video and short talk about make-up and then a fake news show that two people from the tour did. All in all it was a really interesting tour.
After the NBC Studio tour, we did the Rockefeller guide tour. On our way up to where we started that tour, we saw this chandelier, which we later found out is made out of crystal and suppose to look like the Rockefeller Center upside down.
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| Waiting for the tour to begin in the concourse. |
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| Radio City Music Hall |
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| Art work above one of the doors to 30 Rockefeller Centre (also known as 30 Rock) - it has something to do with television, as they were expecting it to be the next biggest thing. The red and green wavy lines are to represent t.v. waves, apparently NBC owned both at first but late sold the green to ABC. |
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| This is the entrance that the famous people use when they go to NBC studios. We started out tour just inside these doors and John Lithgow walked in!! Of course I couldn't think of his name at first so I couldn't point him out to John, BUT I definitely saw him! |
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| Art work in a different building in the center - it is to represent the evolution of travel. The yellow has modes of transportation which was what they had and the white was what they saw as future transportation |
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| This is the spot where the Christmas tree sits each year. The very center piece comes out and is given to the person who donates the tree |
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| Art over another door on another building. I don't remember all the meanings for it, but it as to do with work.... |
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| Entrance to one of the buildings. The escalators are covered in gold leaf, however they are no longer in use because there is nothing up there to go into, all the rooms have been closed off. |
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| Doorway onto 5th Ave. The marble in this room was taken from Greece. The marble was split in half give it a mirror image look. |
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| Statue of Atlas with St. Patrick's Cathedral in the background. When this statute went up the Archbishop was upset about it, but the artist anticipated that and said that he left the world open so that the church could be seen... |
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| and he made him look like he was bowing to the church. Apparently this made the Archbishop happy enough that they didn't have to tear it down. |
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| Best sign we saw - apparently not many people follow it. |
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| Art work over the British building - the artist put the sun at the bottom with the idea that the sun would eventually set on the British Empire (opposite to what everyone said) and then a few years later the sun had set. |
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| The walkway between the British and the French buildings, known as the English Channel. This is the spot where the Christmas angels run down. |
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| 30 Rockefeller Center - this is where you can go up to the 'Top of the Rock" observatory on the 67th floor. |
After the wonderful tour, we headed up to the Top of the Rock observatory. Normally I am fine with things like this, but this one I was not as much. The elevator takes you up to the 67th floor, but you can go up two more floors, we, however, did not do that. The elevator gets you up there in 43 seconds. The ceiling in the elevator is white, but once you get going it is see through and they play a video on it. You can watch each floor go by, as they had blue lights shining for each floor. I had to stop looking as we got closer to the top as I knew I'd be too nervous that it wasn't going to stop! We didn't stay very long on the top, because as I said I was not as happy up there, but John did get a few good pictures of the view...
Once we finished there, we headed back to Central Park to see a few things which we had missed on Sunday when we were there. I wanted to see the Mall, Bethesda Terrace and the Bow Bridge, all of which have been in movies and T.V. shows, see if you can recognize them!
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| This statute had been covered up every time we had come out of the Park, but finally on the last day it was uncovered. Of course I forget what it is suppose to be of. |
Our boat cruise started at 6pm and went around the lower half of the island for a 2 hour cruise. It was really nice, despite being rather cool. John and I both made the comment that it was really nice to do it on the last night we were there. It was just a really great way to finish off the trip, very calm and beautiful sights. Here are some pictures from the cruise, don't let the light sky fool you, it was really dark, the white light made the camera think it was lighter!
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| This is pretty accurate to how dark it was. |
When we got off the boat, we speed walked back to Times Square for breakfast as it was pretty cold at this point. We ate a later dinner at the Olive Garden and took some pictures before heading to the hotel for the evening.
The next morning we packed up, got breakfast, picked up a few last minute souvenirs and then headed to Waterloo to do some shopping at the outlets, where we spent the night and then went to Syracuse in the morning and finally headed home (or at least Canada, we stopped at the farm before home). All in all it was a great trip, despite being very packed. I can easily say that I could never live in New York and I'm not sure that I want to go back for a while, this small town country girl prefers wide open spaces than small cramped roads/sidewalks/hotels rooms etc.
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