City Life is the Good Life

Well, I'm back and trying to get into my normal routine. It's been hard. NYC was great and we definitely packed in as much as you can in 3 days. Here's a lil' recap.

Thursday: Headed over to NBC for the studio tour. We saw the Dateline, Nightly News and Saturday Night Live studios. There were pictures everywhere of old and new casts and all the hosts which was really neat to look at. Our first celebrity sighting, Tiki Barber, took place at NBC. He walked right by our tour group. From NBC we moved on to a meeting at the Edelman PR Firm. (www.edelman.com) We sat and spoke to the company's recruiter and got a lot of information on their hiring process. Intimidating, but expected, I guess, for one of the largest PR firms in the U.S. Afterwards, we walked all over to Central Park, Radio City, Rockafeller Center, 5th Avenue, and Times Square.

Friday: Woke up craaaazy early to make it to the Today Show. We weren't close to the railing, but I got some good pictures of the back of Matt Lauer's and Meredith Viera's heads. Al Roker, too. :) Didn't make it on TV, though. From there we went on the On Location Tour. It was a bus tour of some famous spots seen in TV and movies. The highlight for me was seeing the firehouse from Ghostbusters. (Looove that movie.) It's home to Hook and Ladder 8. They had the door open and you could see the Ghostbusters sign used in the movie hanging inside. I got atleast , I don't know, a million pics. We also saw the house from The Cosby Show, the building used in Friends, and the Moonstruck Diner where Mary Jane worked in the first Spiderman, among other things. We had another celebrity sighting on the tour: Nigel Barker from America's Next Top Model. Needless to say, the girls on the bus were screaming and going crazy snapping pictures... myself included. To round out the afternoon, we moved on to Revlon where we met up with a Penn State alum who works on the financial end of things for the company. She talked a lot about what she does and her past with Revlon. It was a very quick meeting so, not much else was covered. That night a group of us went down to The Village and checked out the bars. Great night, I'll leave it at that.

Saturday: This was our free day. Myself and 2 friends headed to Ground Zero, Battery Park, Canal Street, China Town, and the Tribeca area. They're starting construction on the 9/11 memorial so there was a lot of Ground Zero that was hard to see. There was a temporary 9/11 museum set up nearby that we checked out. Very moving, there wasn't a dry eye in the place. We went and saw the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park due to lines for the ferry being rediculous. Chinatown and Canal Street followed. Let me tell you, when those street vendors think you so much as glance in their direction, they chase after you. They know how to bargain, I'll give 'em that. I also had the best Chinese food EVER that day.

Overall, it was a great time. Visiting some companies that are typical "corporate America" was something I had never experienced first hand. Definitely different than here at the 'tank. I felt very small in those buildings, if that makes sense. One thing's for sure, it will take me a solid week to catch up on my sleep. It was worth it. :)