So lets just be clear. First thoughts on New York (Remembering I have only spent a day here, and all of that, besides the air port and the subway ride over) I want to live here. I am serious. I thought the crowds and the buildings would bother me, but they don’t. Also, Manhattan isn’t as “Big” as it seems on TV. You can basically walk or take the subway in 10 or 15 min to everywhere from everywhere. But I am getting ahead of myself. It is later than I wanted to get up this morning, but we were so tired after our trip, and our wonderful first day, plus with the time change…so Karl is down stairs getting some breakfast and I am in the room blogging.

I am going to try and blog each night for a little bit, so that we don’t miss out on any important details of our trip. Which will be really hard because with the more days ahead like the days we just had, I don’t know how we will do it.

Our plane landed at 5:30 AM at JFK and we got into the city at around 8 AM EST (New York Time) We took a bus to the, Air Train, to the Subway and a two block walk to our Hotel, The Comfort in Time Square. We dropped off our bags off and we were off!

We are staying just a couple of blocks from time square, so before we made our first scheduled stop, we took a little detour through Time Square.

First thought, it wasn’t that big, and it seemed like a mini Vegas.

Recognize this:

Yeah, you guessed it!

Our first day was spent at 30 Rock!

We were going to try to go roller skating at the skating rink, but there was a restaurant selling 15 dollar pieces of toast. We passes on grass.

So we headed inside the building for to get our tickets for the NBC studio tour, and took our first little look around.

The murals in the entryway were nuts. They felt super Communist, although we found out later that they were chosen to remember the men who made the building, and the hard work that is required in business. The style of the whole building, and block for that matter, was the sweet art deco.

Tickets acquired, we had a few hours until out next scheduled appointment so we started to wander around. The famous fountain.

Do, Do, DO Do DO DO DO DO, Do do do do do.

We found St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Isn’t this where Don Guiest had his funeral?

They are currently trying to restore the building, and there is scaffolding all around it. It looked closed, but we found a door, and got in. (It wasn’t this door)

I took a seat, it was at this point that my right foot began to kill me.

At least the view from the bench was breathtaking!

Check it out:

We were on 5th Avenue, so we we deiced to stop at, where else, Saks!

It was a department store, that was like 15 stories high, it was all really super expensive. This is two seconds before a lady yelled a me for taking pictures in the shoe department.

We ran into a sweet bike on out way out:

Complete with Brooks saddle. Ahh, some day.

On our way back to 30 Rock, we found the Nintendo store.

There was some amazing memorabilia and sweet stuff to buy too:

We stopped for lunch at Caregie Deli

This is what I wanted:

Out came their famous pickles. The light green ones were so fresh tasting and cold. The darker pickles taste like lemon pepper. They were amazing! Nothing like the Costco pickles we keep stocked in our fridge.

Karl had the Roast beef.

I ordered a Ruben, which I thought was going to be like the pic in the window, when it came it was a $23.99 pile of pastrami!

Yeah there is some rye bread in there.

Acros the street was Ben Ash, that had some classic Italian pastries, which we partook of:

The time finally came for out NBC studio tour. No pictures were allowed. So we tooks last pics before we went in:

These were the Pages that took us on our tour.

Our passes.

The tour was awesome! We saw the new desk for MSNBS, where they film Nightly News, and learned that Brian Williams is a huge narcissist. We saw where they film Dr. Oz, which I have seen before, it is usually really weird. Now that Opera is gone, they expect it to be the #1 Day time talk show. Then, SNL! Which was amazing! The studio is so small, and it is near impossible to get tickets. They don’t start taping for another month anyway.

We stopped of in the gift shop, and found this one, which made me think of Krysta:

This one made Karl think of Zac:

Bobble head mania:

Then the main event!

A Live Taping on Late Night with Jimmy Falon!

The taping was amazing! Julia Stiles was there, JayWow, from Jersey Shore, and there was a sweet guest appearance from Steve Colbert! Oh My GOSH! WE WERE FEAKING OUT!

At the end of the show, Jimmy came up and down, and gave us both high fives!

One these hands!!!

(Added on 8/15)

I found the link to see the episode on hulu, I haven’t seen the whole thing yet, but I think we show up, check it out!)

http://www.hulu.com/watch/268062/late-night-with-jimmy-fallon-fri-aug-12-2011

The last stop of the night:

TOP OF THE ROCK!

It was seriously breathtaking!

Ok, I was totally geeking out!

One of the things that I am looking forward to the most, is going up the Empire State building. We are going up soon. Karl read that 30 rock gives a better view of the city, so we decided to go up on our first day, to get a feeling for the city.

We could see the Statue of Liberty

Christmas Card:

We bought this little pamphlet figuring out where everything was.

I found Central Park.

We stayed up on top and watched the sunset.

On our way down we found a little disco tech on the Top of the Rock.

Not really, it is just this funny light room with lights that are programed to follow each person in the room.

The lights came on:

Face:

Cut Crystal with light inside!

We made it through time square on our way back to the Hotel. It was much more impressive at night time, and actually seemed a lot bigger. Again, it really reminded me Vegas.

Michael Scott’s real NY Pizza.

A view of the square:

We stopped into a tiny little Pizza Place for a real NY Slice:

Oh so good!

We got here, and now, we are going sleep!