Sex and the City Tour

On Location Tours offers several different kinds of New York City tours, but the Sex and the City tour called to me the loudest.  My friends and I are total Sex and the City junkies; we own the fuzzy pink-covered Sex and the City complete series DVDs, the movie, and will be purchasing our tickets in advance for the second Sex and the City movie just as soon as they become available.  We even choose which character we are most like (and no, mine isn’t Samantha – although sometimes I wish it were!).

So here I am, on the On Location Tours bus, ready to get my Sex and the City on, and the Tour Guide picks up the microphone and welcomes everyone.  She is pretty, petite, and slightly raunchy, which was hilarious.  The tour started across the street from the Plaza Hotel, and that one spot was the site of 2 or 3 scenes in the show.  The great thing about the tour is that not only do you get to drive by some of the locations in the show and the movie, but after getting to see each location in real life, they play the clip where the location was in the show.  So, after we first started to move away from Pulitzer Fountain in front of both the Plaza Hotel and the Paris Cinema, we got to see the scenes where both of those locations were shown in the actual series.  It was so much fun because for a split second you got to feel like you were a part of it. 

Most of the locations were “drive bys”, but we did get out and stop at four locations in particular.  For the first location, you have to remember the name of the show – SEX and the City.  No, we didn’t stop at a brothel; we stopped at The Pleasure Chest, the sex toy shop that the girls took Charlotte to so she could purchase her first sex toy.  Around the corner was also a pizza shop, Two Boots, which was also featured in one of the episodes.  I wondered how many people would opt to forgo the sex toy shop and demurely walk instead to the pizza shop, but from what I saw, pretty much everyone went into The Pleasure Chest, including yours truly.  I was too insanely curious not to!  In the end, the only purchase I made was a birthday card for my best friend, whose birthday just so happened to be on that upcoming Saturday.  It was the perfect card, too.

We then moved on and saw more locations on our way to Buddakan, the fabulous bar and restaurant where Carrie and Big had their engagement party in the movie, and also where one of the movie’s New Year’s Eve scenes was filmed.  The location is simply exquisite, a true feast for the eyes.  We got the privilege of touring the location prior to it opening, which was a real treat because without the usual crowds you could really take in the aesthetic beauty of the décor.

We then drove by several other Sex and the City filming locations, and then stopped at our third stop, Magnolia Bakery in Greenwich Village.  It was here that Carrie and Miranda sat outside on a bench in front of the bakery to eat their cupcakes, and where Carrie told Miranda that she had a crush.  That crush turned out to be Aiden – and we all know the only one who got crushed in that relationship was Aiden, not Carrie.  The Tour Guide gave us 20 minutes to do some quick shopping in the area, and with stores like Michael Kors, Juicy Couture, Coach and several others, everyone was happy to oblige.  The best part of this stop was that everyone got a Magnolia Bakery cupcake of their very own and it was delish!

We moved on to get some other locations in while on our way to our fourth and final stop, a bar on Bleeker Street.  In real life the bar’s name is O’Nieals, but on the show it was Scout – the bar that Steve and Aiden opened together.  We each got to drink one fabulous Cosmo there before boarding the bus again to go back to our drop-off spot.  I have to say, having a cocktail at 1:30 in the afternoon was one of the most decadently fun things I have done in a very long time – so Sex and the City fabulous!

All in all, the tour offers a very good time.  I would have liked it if we could have gotten off the bus and made a couple more stops, but I do understand that in the interest of time in makes sense to only have four stops.  As it was, the tour started at 11 am and didn’t end until 2:30 pm, but it was the fastest 3 and a half hours I’ve ever spent.  It was entertaining, informative, slightly bawdy, and lots of fun.  And as for a rating, I give it a full 4 Cosmos!

Photo credit: Issa M. Mas

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