Remember when we told you about the Gossip Girl Tour of NYC? Well, as a fan of the show and a New Yorker, I went ahead and took the tour.
It was pouring rain, but undeterred, about 86 of us piled onto a coach for $40 apiece. We were hosted by an adorable redhaired actress named Meghan, who definitely talked the talk and walked the walk, and dressed much like one of the faux Upper East Side denizens. She cheerfully and enthusiastically recounted favorite moments from the show, asked trivia questions, and did a stellar job of keeping track of everybody when we took little trips off the bus to places like Henri Bendel. She pointed out restaurants and bars which were shooting locations, and we walked the grounds of several spots like “Constance Billard School for Girls” (actually The Museum of the City of New York, pictured).
Highlights of the tour included fun tidbits like the fact that the real girls who attend Marymount — across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art — really do eat their lunch on the steps of the museum like Blair and Serena, pretty spots in Central Park, shopping at Dylan’s Candy Bar and a shot of agave-based frosting from a trendy bakery on the Lower East Side. For tourists, this tour really does take you all over the city and show you some very cool places to revisit on your stay, from trendy nightclub Butter to famed Ukrainian diner Veselka.
The pack consisted mostly of Gossip Girl-ishly dressed young ladies in their late teens and some parents, and I brought along a non fan with me (he has no particular aversion to the show, he just doesn’t watch it) to see how the uninitiated would handle the tour, as most of my New York friends said they had actually never seen it — would he be bored? Well, the next day he sent me this:
“One of the most compelling parts of the whole tour was the creative and engaging delivery of our host, who made every effort to recant the plotlines while untangling the web of characters and places along the route into a living map of the city and the show its self. While the tour was a bit long at three and three quarters hours, there wasn’t a moment where our host wasn’t actively engaging the attendees. It was a great way to be reintroduced to my city.”
He now considers himself an expert on all things Gossip Girl. The tour even included clips of the show played on video screens at the front of the bus (see gallery).
Lower points for New Yorkers would be photo ops at places like Grand Central where we just felt like we were in the way, but for an out of towner, that’s an important stop. It was a lot of fun, even as a resident, to see the heavenly little havens where shooting takes place — it gave us both a lot of respect for Gossip Girl’s location scouts. Really, you’d be driving down a regular east side street and suddenly there would be a storefront or apartment entryway that looked like a dream — they were almost invariably filming locations.
If you’re not into piling onto a bus with 86 people, you also have the option for a more personal Gossip Girl tour by limo. The tour is $180 per person for a minimum of five people and includes a guided tour and lunch at a restaurant used in filiming the show.
Click here to purchase tickets!
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