New York Report 2

New York Trip Posts: We're Here / Three Hour Cruise / Report 1 / I'm Trapped / NBC Tour / In the Park / SoHo / Street Shopping / Report 2 / Waiting / The Clinic / At the Trump Tower / Big Green Lady / New York at Night / Report 3 / Day at the Museum / Grand Hall / Wicked / Report 4 / First Impressions of Carnegie Hall / At Last / We're Famous / Terrific Night in NY / Three Favorite Ladies / Guess the Photo / My Group

The last time I left you we were heading off to Saturday night dinner which turned out to be in a high tech karaoke joint over on Broadway. That was a long 2 1/2 hours of headbangingly loud music and mediocre to really bad performances. Oh well, the kids had fun.

Sunday was a mix of scheduled and open time. We had breakfast together at Applebee's over on 50th Street. They don't normally open for breakfast, but set up a special buffet for our 90 people and we had a good time. In honor of Father's Day, all the dads on the trip got first shot at the buffet, and given how much some of those kids can eat, it was probably a good thing.

Following breakfast we headed over to the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center and took the studio tour. They took us into the surprisingly tiny studio of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and the famous Saturday Night Live studio. They also gave us some of the behind-the-scenes technical stuff, including a look at the main control room from which every NBC signal is generated up to the satellite and out to the affiliates.

After a brief stop back at the hotel, we took all 90 kids down into the subway and rode down to Greenwich Village where we spent about 4 hours walking all through the Village, NYU, Washington Square, and SoHo, the artsy section of southern Manhattan. Lots of interesting folks and sights.

Dinner required another trip up the subway to Times Square for pizza at John's Pizza, which is located in a converted church building on 44th Street. It has a beautiful stained glass roof and windows, and our group was seated in what would have been the second balcony. After dinner I took my little group on a walking tour of the Times Square area, which to me looks a lot like Las Vegas without the slot machines. Huge signs, lighted marquis, and all sorts of glitter and gloss, complete with the knock-off designer purse seller and the other street vendors you find on every block.

We also walked north of the hotel to Carnegie Hall and the southern edge of Central Park. The kids were named on the Carnegie Hall marquis, and the thrill of the whole thing is starting to set in. The park is beautiful, but no place you want to be a night, and since dusk was falling, we just kind of peeked in before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Today will be a busy day for the kids. We have breakfast together at 9:30, followed by a clinic with a very well respected Broadway conductor. The moment the clinic is complete, we have to bus over to the Trump Tower for an afternoon concert in the atrium. Then it's back to the hotel to change, and another bus over to the boat for the dinner/dance cruise on the Hudson River. I actually think some of the kids are looking forward more to that than the appearance at Carnegie Hall.

I'll try to check in tomorrow morning with a report on today's activities. It's been tough to find time to get to a computer, but we're having fun!