USA Holiday, November 04 (Bronx Bombers)

Back at Rockefeller today, but this time for the NBC Studio Tour. The tour is lead by two friendly NBC pages, neither of which were Kenneth. Sadly you also aren't allowed to take photos during the tour. On the tour you get to see the NBC news studios, and they were doing live filming of some 24 hour CNBC channel next to this. After this you get to see the SNL set, which is very small and they have hardly any seating capacity for the audience. I was hoping to get to see something related to The Office or 30 Rock, or maybe some celebrities, but no luck.

Having been to a number of tourist spots by now, you should be prepared for the following things:

• You end up at the gift shop - makes sense
• The items at the gift shop are almost always the same - magnets, shot glass, t-shirt, postcards etc.
• They try to sell you a personalised photo taken with you and a backdrop of the location you're at - and usually expensive
• They have these 51 cent penny machines - you insert two quarters and a penny, and they give you back that penny stamped with a special logo

Next was the Madison Square Garden. I had paid for tickets before getting the City Pass, so we could have actually gotten in here for free. I was surprised to learn they had a whole separate, smaller theatre right beneath the main basketball arena, where they had Cirque Du Soleil about to perform at the time. The Knicks were due to play that night, so we weren't able to see their locker room, instead we got to see the NY Rangers.

One of the Knicks' dancers stopped by as part of the tour, and that didn't go down so well. There was dead silence when our tour guide asked if there was any questions for her and the same when we had a photo opportunity. One woman in our group must have felt sorry for her and reluctantly got involved in both activities. I was a little disappointed that our tour guide had only been in the job a few months and didn't even really seem to be a sports / Knicks fan, rather just doing the job - certainly not as good as the SF and LA tour guides.

Heading back uptown now to go to the Bronx to visit the Bronx Zoo, again free with the pass. I'm not much of a zoo or animal person, but the Bronx Zoo had a pretty good range of animals and quite a large area, although several of the animals seemed to be MIA, possibly because it was so cold and almost winter. The biggest disappointment was not getting to see any bears.

When a sign says "Do not feed the bears", man, you'd better not feed the bears.

As the zoo was closing and we were already in the Bronx, I decided why not go for a visit to see what Yankee Stadium looks like up close. Today was actually game six of the World Series, and in fact the day that the Yankees won their 27th world series, so that was cool. The Old Yankee Stadium was still around right across the road from the current stadium - I thought they might have knocked it down by now.

New Yankee Stadium.

Old Yankee Stadium.

I had tickets to go see The Fiery Furnaces over in Hoboken, New Jersey tonight, but after working out the time it would take to get there and back, and the fact I'd be getting back around 1am or later, I decided to skip it and do some planning for the rest of the NY trip, while watching the Yankees win!