Sopranos Tour…

Sopranos Tour…
http://www.zerve.com/
used NYCO code to get 2 for 1 ticket
Corrie and I are Sopranos fanatics… In fact in preparation for the Sopranos tour, before our holiday began we had watched the all of the episodes on DVD from episode 1 of season 1 to the very last episode…
The tour bus picked us up a block or 2 from the HBO store and our tour guide was the very charismatic Marc Baron – an actor who has worked on 13 episodes of the show…
The first part of the tour found us retracing Tony Soprano’s journey from the opening titles of the show, heading out of Manhattan to Jersey, passing all the sights from that famous opening sequence…
Along the way, Marc kept us entertained with fascinating Sopranos trivia and quizzes… Marc would point out filming locations throughout the journey, explaining how the shots were filmed before replaying the scenes on the DVD player aboard the bus…
We stopped at various locations including the diner where Tony Soprano’s nephew, Chris Moltisanti got shot, the diner where they filmed the final scene from the final episode and our last stop, the famous strip bar Bada Bing (an actual strip club called Satin Dolls)… At all these stops, Marc explained to us how and where the shots were taken, and at Satin Dolls, we got 25 mins to enjoy a drink and watch the girls dance (at this point I must say, apparently in New Jersey strip club laws are extremely strict and allow the owner to only have either an alcohol licence or a strip licence, so the scenes filmed in Bada Bing are a mistake… In this case, Satin Dolls chose to have an alcohol licence)…
After a good 3 hours of touring the Bus took us back to the HBO store in Manhattan, which had remained open late just for us…
All in all the tour was brilliant… Not only did we get to see the locations used in the filming of the Sopranos, but we also learned lots of trivia about the cast, crew and filming of the show and got a tour of New Jersey…
If you’re a fan of the Sopranos, you’ll love this…

Saturday 5th April 2008

Saturday 5th April 2008

This morning I was still feeling sluggish so we delayed leaving the studio until midday… We had the Sopranos tour scheduled in and got two for one tickets using the code NYCO on the zerve website… We thought we would make our way towards the tour meeting on the outskirts of Times Square in the hope that we would find the HBO store, as we are big fans of lots of the HBO shows, well we found it and bought a few great bits and pieces for ourselves and some gifts for friends and family… The staff were really chatty and once we mentioned that we were doing the tour they gave us 10% off which was cool! We chatted with them for awhile and headed off to grab a quick salad before the tour…

The tour itself was great, the dude that took the tour Marc Barren was really informative with great info on the actors, sets, and general info on the show, he was in 13 episodes… We went around parts of Jersey which was also cool, to see a bit more of the US, and went to the café that the last scene was shot in and of course the Bada Bing! Which unfortunately was the worst strip club I have been too… The girls didn’t actually strip, just dancing round (not even provocatively nor using the pole) in their underwear… This is due to state law; they can’t have booze and boobs, one or the other… And they drop you off at the HBO store so we went for round two! The staff remembered us which I thought was cool...

We decided to walk up to the Brooklyn Diner – on a recommendation, and it was really good! Before the food came we saw David Walliams (looking extremely hot in a suit) and Matt Lucas ( looking super casual) two tables down from us, I was totally star struck, we are fans of Little Britain… I ordered the ‘famous’ chicken pot pie, I can see why they say it’s famous, it was divine!!! Was really good to get some yummy veggies, I feel our trip hasn’t provided a good option with lots of colourful vegetables! Mark was stuck for a vegetarian option so went for the chicken parmigana, which looked great and he said (referring to that year of eating chicken in 2005) that it was better then any chicken parmigana he has had in Australia (and when he ate chicken we ate a lot of different chicken parmas!), it was quite like ‘pizza with a chicken base’

On the way to the diner we spotted Rockefeller centre and impulsively decided to go to top of the rock… I’m not big on views and we had some great views from the tour but I thought its better to try these things then pass them by… So we went up, I forgot my discount pass because I never really thought we would go! Once we got through all of the rigmarole and made it though to the top it was quite beautiful!!! I’m not sure how people spend hours there, but we did scoot around to every possible photo angle and snap away… We didn’t go up to the 3rd and highest viewing point as I was tripping about the heights factor on the 2nd deck! But it is worth doing, if only once in your life, I probably wouldn’t do it again…

And then it was home to bed, another long day planned tomorrow…