This may be a slightly shorter blog than normal seeing as day 4 was a bit of a shopping day and I don’t have the time to list all of the things that I purchased. What I will say is that I love Free People with all my heart. Sephora, you guys are pretty damn good too. And god bless Victoria Secret for your sale.

We didn’t go far for our shopping – simply walked down Broadway to Macy’s from our hotel (near Times Square) and suddenly we were in the middle of the abundance of shops in that area, which we did indeed make the most of. At first Macy’s confused the hell out of me fyi because it took me far too long to realise just how many levels there are in that store. I can’t remember how many exactly but I know its a lot.

Anyway, shopping wasn’t all we did. I mean I didn’t even mention it in the title of this post and I’m not about that clickbait life. After shopping we got some cheesecake from Juniors Bakery, which you can’t really go to New York and not do to be fair. I had red velvet and I would happily eat it every day of my life.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd6GjS5nAek/?taken-by=abipageaustin

 

Once we were stuffed, we wandered down 5th avenue (as you do) and popped into Tiffanys (yep actual Tiffanys from Breakfast at Tiffanys and rich people’s necks/fingers/wrists around the world).  We went in there so my mum could buy a necklace which was all very exciting. By god, its fancy in there. Personally I’m not a big expensive jewellery person (I just don’t really get it, I’m more of a flea market ring kind of girl) but it was cool seeing how the other half live.

After this, we casually walked up to 30 Rock for an NBC Studio Tour (I even popped into Free People on the way) and went inside to find the NBC store where you pick up your tickets for the tour (I had prebooked them online and would recommend doing this because they sell out ahead of time). It was only when I got my tickets out that I realised we were already 20 minutes late (I do not recommend this). Thankfully the girls in the shop were super helpful and ran us through security quickly, to join us back up with the group. We had missed a fair amount by this point but it was gracious of them to let us on the tour in the first place.

 

I work in TV in the UK and I’ve always been a big fan of 30 Rock (Tina Fey’s sitcom set behind the scenes on a fictional show in this very building) so it wasn’t all that new to me but its still awesome seeing the sets of Saturday Night Live (it was a saturday and they were in costume in rehearsal which was damn cool and Jimmy Fallon (this wasn’t in production at the time). They have all sorts of stories and tidbits that are fun to hear, though you could kind of tell the pages were tired of giving tours at this point (pages are basically assistants on TV shows that also give tours for some reason). My mum had absolutely no idea what any of the shows were so it was also fun seeing her feign interest in them even though it was like we were all speaking a foreign language. If you’re a fan then make an effort to go, if not you can probably skip it.

After the tour, we popped back to the hotel and got ready for dinner at Etcetera Etcetera, a highly reviewed but affordable Italian place I had booked a table at the night before. I figured it was Saturday night so it was bound to be busy and I was right. The place was packed but it made the atmosphere lovely. I loved the restaurant – the food was so good I can even excuse their slightly odd name choice.

 

I picked that restaurant partly because of its fantastic reviews but also because it wasn’t far from Hell’s Kitchen ‘Upright Citizens Brigade’ where we had tickets to a show called ‘Goat’ booked. I was super excited about this – I absolutely love improv comedy. I’m a big Second City fan and everyone that has ever come out of there, and we even got to see a show when we were in Toronto a couple of years back.

I won’t lie, I wanted to see ASSSCAT 3000, the show they’re most known for, but it was sold out because I booked too late so we went to see GOAT instead (tickets come on sale a couple of weeks ahead of time, so if you want to go you have to be quick). The show was still great, the theatre was a lot more profesh than I thought it would be though! Proper seating, not just chairs around the edge as I was expecting.

The idea of GOAT is that they can read your mind (they of course cannot genuinely do this, don’t be afraid), so they shout things out to the audience like “I get the feeling someone in this corner of the room had a bad meal recently” and then people shout things back and they do improv based on what they’ve said. In that way I think a lot of how the night goes is based on how good the audience is. Though there were a few stand out stories (including a guy that had ordered pizza when really drunk, eaten it and then forgotten he had eaten it because he was so drunk and complained to the restaurant), most were quite tame and I think that had a big effect on how the night went. It was good but not the best I’ve ever seen if I’m being honest. Its worth going to see a show at UCB no matter what though, I think I’ve just been spoiled so far with what I’ve seen – do please go and I’m sure you’ll laugh your bum off. Then tell me about it and make me jealous; part of the genius of improv is that you’re so unlikely to ever see anything repeated. Once they’ve done a scene, its done and that moment is gone. This means if its great, you’ll be thinking about how funny it is for ages without ever being able to see it again and if its terrible, no one outside of that room will ever truly know.

The moral of this blog I would have to say is if you want to do fun stuff on a Saturday in New York, please please think ahead and book tickets for your own sanity. It will make life so much easier and take the stress out of your day. As long as once you’ve booked said tickets, you then turn up on time for them that is…

Now, I’m writing this by candlelight listening to rain sounds after doing some yoga because I suddenly had the impulse to do it but I’m very soothed and relaxed right now, so I’m going to end this here. This ending does also in fact correlate with the end of our day/night on our fourth day in New York though, its not like I’ve missed out a huge chunk of the day where we robbed a bank or anything (or did I?)

 

Abi

X

@travelteatv