49. Jet Set with me to NYC

A quintessential trip to New York wouldn’t be complete without a visit to famous landmarks like Central Park and the Statue of Liberty, but it’s also the perfect place for the ultimate Sex in the City “set jetting” adventure and your chance to experience the city in Carrie Bradshaw’s footsteps. Tune in for your guide to the Big Apple’s must-sees, hidden gems, and the iconic filming locations that will transport you to the glamorous realm of Carrie Bradshaw and her friends.

References in this episode:
Central Park
TKTS
Broadway
Sex and the City Bus Tour
Yankee Stadium
Episode 38 with Molly Rogers
United Nations
Public Theatre
Gilded Age Mansion Tour
Contact Michele to plan your next vacation
Connect with Michele on IG

This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.

Transcript

Hello, my fellow jetsetters. How are you today? Welcome to episode 49 of jetsetting with me. Today, we are going right to the city and the tour that hatched all my ideas for set jetting. Now if you don't remember, set jetting is the trend of traveling to destinations that were the filming locations of the best of our screens. Now, I didn't come up with that idea, but I did come up with the idea, I think, of combining set jetting with the storytellers who told the stories that are in those famous locations. And it all happened with Sex and the City in New York City. So let's head there. Let's take a walk in Carrie's famous heels.

PS, not me, I'll be in tennis shoes. But whether you're a die hard fan of the show or you are just excited to explore New York City, this set jutting pot is gonna make you fall in love with the city that never sleeps all over again. So get ready to make memories and immerse yourself in the charm of New York City, and let's hit those streets and walk in Carrie's fabulous footsteps. Now there was really too much to talk about and put it all in one. So I've broken it into 3 different parts of New York City. The quintessential New York City, quintessential Carrie, and the show canon of Sex and the City, and then maybe a few hidden gems that if you were just going for the first time, you might not hit. So let's start with quintessential New York City. Really quickly, Central Park, Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Broadway, the 911 Memorial, and the One World Observatory, otherwise known as the top of the World Trade Center.

All things you've seen pictures of, you've heard about, and probably, definitely for any first timer, these should be on your list. Now Central Park is huge. It could take a day to itself. It's got a zoo. It's got gardens. It's got guided tours. It's got restaurants, including the famous Tavern on the Green, which if you wanna eat there, it's not a quick dine. Make sure you have an hour in your day for that.

So there's a lot to do in Central Park, and you definitely can't miss it. Just head to the middle of the city, and it's right there. Now there is a lot of history about the architecture and the building of Central Park, and you can take tours that offer that. So I'm putting a link in the show notes to the Central Park website. It's got all kinds of the do it yourself guides. Of course, you can work with your favorite travel advisor, who can help you make sure to schedule just the right enough amount of time in Central Park. Now, taking a ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty in Ellis Island, also probably a half day, because you might wanna climb to the Statue of Liberty as high as you can, and you need tickets for that. And also Ellis Island, which has been redone since the last time I've been to Ellis Island.

And what I hear is a fabulous museum that, at least the way my mom does museums, takes a good half a day. So again, you wanna work with a travel adviser who can make sure to schedule your priorities and what you wanna do to make sure you have enough time to get to some of these other things beyond quintessential New York City. K. Broadway and Times Square. We've all seen the pictures of Times Square up in lights and the different theaters with their show posters. It's a good time. There's Broadway museums. There's costumes.

I love Broadway, and I could spend hours there on Times Square. But did you know that there's a special place to get half price tickets called TKTS? It opens at 3 o'clock on any day that Broadway has shows, and you can find half price tickets to multiple shows. You can actually go online and look at the shows that they're offering in advance, so you kinda know what you wanna do. I actually just did this, and I promise you, you're not gonna get the hottest ticket in town. For that, you're gonna have to go to broadway.com and pay retail, but there are great deals for matinees or for single tickets if you're not opposed to splitting your party up. Currently, there are over 52 different shows on Broadway to choose from. So lots of choices for any type of live theater goer, musicals and plays. And then, of course, the 911 Memorial and the One World Observatory.

This is something else I wouldn't rush right through. The memorial is really beautiful. And since it's modern history, at least everyone who knows me was also alive at this time. And then, of course, you can see the renewal of the World Trade Center by going up to the top of the One World Observatory. You can eat there. There's 3 levels. It's really beautiful. For those of us who are challenged by height, I will say the elevator ride up scared the bejesus out of me, and I had to keep my eyes closed.

Once I got there, I was able to look out, but I could not get very close to the windows because they do have part of the floor where you can see all the way down. And I was like, not for me. Not today. No way. So again, the quintessential New York things that we see in pictures and that most people talk about Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island, which requires the ferry ride, Broadway, Times Square, and the 911 Memorial, and the One World Observatory. So now let's talk about quintessential Carrie. And, of course, by Carrie, I do mean all of the canon of Sex and the City and and Just Like That. So there is a bus tour, which is offered by on location tours for Sex and the City filming locations.

It's a guided 3 and a half hour bus tour, and for some weird reason, you're not allowed to bring Cosmos on board. It offers at least 40 locations that will have you wining and dining at fashionable places all over New York City. So you will get to walk past Carrie's famous brownstone stoop in the West Village. You can step into her shoes quite literally while you go to the SJP shoe store. Enjoy a cosmo at the now famous O'Neil's, which is an American restaurant bar near Little Italy. Shop your heart out at the Greenwich Village Boutiques, as Carrie and all of her friends would, including the Marc Jacobs store, Ralph Lauren. And then, of course, no quintessential Carrie tour would be complete without indulging in the delicious cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery. So that's a pretty good 3 and a half hours way to see everything any real fan.

Well, not everything, but a lot of what the real fans of sex in the city wanna see. Now season 5 episode 1, which is one of my favorite episodes. It's Anchors Away. It celebrates fleet week. It was the first episode to air after 911 and it was really according to Michael Patrick King, was a love note to New York City. And in it, Carrie sees a movie at the iconic Paris Theater. So that's one of the most amazing things about living in a city like New York. Carrie says, any night of the week, you can go to Paris.

She's extolling the virtues of, as I said, the Paris theater. It's located right across from the Plaza Hotel, which is another famous spot in Sexton City, but also in the Gilded Age. The theater only shows one film. It's typically an independent flick at a time, and it's one of the most beautiful places to catch a movie in this city. In that same episode, she heads to the Guggenheim, which is closed and it starts to pour. But for the rest of us, it is a gallery that isn't the MoMA. For those in the know, that would be the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. It's an architectural gem.

I'm talking about the Guggenheim. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it houses an impressive collection of modern and contemporary art, and all of us who visit can admire the unique spiral structure of the building and explore artworks that include Picasso and Kandinsky. The museum itself is a work of art. It provides a captivating experience for art and architecture lovers both, and the iconic swirling ramp inside the museum leads visitors on a journey through different art movements and styles. Who can forget Yankee Stadium? Where she invites the new Yankee out. But seriously, if you've never done a stadium tour, they're really fun even for those of us who are not fan addicts, or in this case, fans of the Yankees. You get to see VIP boxes, dugouts, and sometimes even get some on the field walks to the mound. If you would like to see something about a stadium tour, I did one when I was in Saint Louis.

I saw the Busch Stadium. And all the pictures from that are on my Instagram, which if you may or may not know has been changed to at jetsetting with Michelle. So that's j e t s e t t I n g with Michelle with one l. And finally, of course, Trapeze School in New York City. So I first tried Trapeze School here in Austin. And again, I have a fear of heights, So I pretty much screamed like get me off of this thing, which you still have to sort of jump to get off. And I really hated it. Like I skipped my 2nd turn.

I wouldn't go again. And while I was consulting with Club Med, every Club Med has a circus school. So I could have tried again with maybe a little more private education, but it wasn't something I felt like I needed to do. But my colleague and close friend, Jessica Fry, who is also a travel adviser, and she specializes in different things than I do. So if you are interested in learning about her and her business, I will leave a link to her in the show notes. We work together frequently. She came to a Club Med FAM that I put on. Fam is travel advisor speak familiarization tour.

And she fell in love with the Trapeze. So when she went to New York City, she tried the spot where SATC filmed a portion of season six's The Catch at the Trapeze School in New York City. So I will leave a link to both Jessica and Trapeze School, if that's something you wanna do on your next time to New York. Now let's talk about a few of the hidden gems. But if you're doing everything that I just mentioned, you in a weekend, this is for a weekend stay, you might not have time to do these things. But if you do, it can infuse your trip with a few quote unquote less touristy things. So take a walk on the High Line. The High Line is an urban park that was built above a historic freight rail line, and it's elevated above the streets.

It's on Manhattan's west side. You can enjoy a stroll down the High Line. It has landscape gardens, art installations, and scenic views of the city. It's from Grand Savort Street in the meatpacking district to West 34th Street. It's a great place to people watch, and you can experience a blend of nature and urban design that's very modern in the heart of New York City. So instead of checking out Broadway, why not go to the Public Theater? The Public Theater was conceived over 60 years ago as one of the nation's first non profit theaters, and it has long operated on the principles that theater is an essential cultural force, and it is culture and art that belongs to everyone. So again, it's a non profit theater. It's used as a way to launch shows to Broadway while they're working out the kinks, and they do public performances.

So Hair was the first show there. It premiered in 1967 at the Public Theater, and now the Public Theater is represented on Broadway by the more than 10 years and still going strong show of Hamilton. Check out the Chrysler building. Sometimes this building gets missed because unlike the Empire State and the One World, it does not have an observatory. So you don't get to go up to the top. The exterior and the lobby are an architectural marvel. It's an art deco skyscraper. It's in midtown Manhattan, and the lobby has these art deco motifs.

It's got intricate elevator doors, marble walls, and a really beautiful stunning ceiling mural. So of course, that could be a place that you could go in, but not to the top. So maybe that's appropriate for me, the person who doesn't like heights. The UN has a typical standard tour that lasts about an hour, and it's a must visit for any history and culture rough. The standard tour will provide insight into the work of the UN across all humanitarian, social, and economic issues. It is a great opportunity to learn about some of the global challenges and the efforts the UN does to address them. You will experience the global atmosphere during the tour, including seeing some of the meeting rooms based on whether they're in use at the time. But there are specialty tours, so if you want more than just the standard tour, there are specialty tours including ones that focus on women's history and Black history.

And one more for fans of the Gilded Age, which is another HBO show that I love. A walking tour of the great mansions of 5th Avenue and their owners who constructed them, as lavish displays of their wealth and status in the gilded age of New York City. So this tour starts at East 70th Street and 5th Avenue, right at the Richard Morris Hunt Memorial. Now if you've listened to the official Gilded Age podcast, which I of course listen to after every episode, This walking tour is done by one of the hosts of that show from the Bowery Boys. And this is just down the block from The Frick Collection, and it ends at the Cooper, Hulett, which is the East Second and 91st Street. The former homes of the 2 protagonists, Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie. So definitely a cool tour there by the Bowery Boys. Now again, I have to put in a plug for travel advisors.

Yes. I do know that you could plan this by yourself. But why not hit up a travel advisor who can actually give you this guide in writing with time stamps. Make sure you have all your tickets and reservations as needed, and that you get to see everything that you wanna see. So if heading to New York City is on your next travel list, please do hit me up. My email is michelle, again with 1l, at makin memories travel. Makin memoriestravel.co.c0. And obviously, my email is in the show notes as well.

So I am actually heading back to New York City for the first time in 5 years, the 1st weekend of May. So my must do list this time includes parts of all three of my lists. So from quintessential New York, I have to go see a Broadway play. Usually wanna see musicals. This time, I really wanna see MJ. It isn't listed on the TKTS site, so I will probably do a matinee showing. That will give me time to finally do the Sex and the City bus tour. And because and just like that will be in production, I might follow some Instagram clues and say hello to my friend, Molly Rogers.

So if you haven't heard Molly's interview on the show about her costume design and end just like that, and what's back in production, be sure to go back and listen to episode 38. I wanna do the walking tour of the Gilded Age from the Bowery Boys. And a Yankee Stadium tour is on my list. I've actually never seen a Yankees game or been to that stadium. And if there's a show at the public, I would definitely be interested in seeing what's there. So the question is, how do I get it all in over a quick weekend trip? I may have to make it 4 days. Quote, unquote, long weekend. So stay tuned to a future episode.

I'll let you know how I did and what my favorites were. What's on your list for your next New York City vacation? I definitely wanna hear and know. Drop me a DM on Instagram and tell me.