Recently, I was invited by On Location Tours to take their Gossip Girl tour which basically consists of a wonderfully air conditioned and super comfy tour bus driving all around Manhattan and visiting a trillion locations (OK, slight exaggeration- but still, over 40 locations are visited) that were/are used in the making of the hit series Gossip Girl (which as most of you also know, I love, LOVE).
So I obviously took On Location Tours up on their offer and grabbed my partner in crime, aka photographer, aka ‘Jacek’ and jumped on board – of the bus!
Obviously, no tour is complete without a guide and you can be sure that the guides On Location Tours are anything but boring. In fact, they are the complete opposite of boring and absolutely love what they do! Lindsey, for example was our tour guide and she is a Gossip Girl junkie. I mean, this girl knows her GG trivia and walks and talks the part. She is highly interactive – asking questions and explaining how different scenes were filmed in the making of the show and how the characters have evolved. She even has some really interesting facts about the actor’s personal lives; past and present. Most importantly, she knows all the cool GG places to go and even uses real footage from the show during the tour to play scenes from the locations visited. This is really great since you can actually see on screen the same thing you see in person including:
*The hotel that is home to the Bass and Van der Woodsen
families, where so many of the scenes from Gossip Girl take place.
*The Constance Billard School for Girls/St. Jude School for Boys.
*The lavish Fifth Avenue building that Blair Waldorf calls home.
*The Box (aka The Victrola; the club Chuck Bass purchases and Blair dances for him on that oh so infamous night of the limo ride).
While some spots are viewed from the bus only, others you are encouraged to go out and explore. You can shop, grab a sweet treat or have your picture taken at many of the locations. As part of the tour package, you will even recieve a 20% off discount to use at Henri Bendel where Blair and Serena shop as well as a complimentary treat from Humphrey’s favorite bakery.
This tour was so much fun and even though I live in NY I was really surprised at how much of the city I was able to see for the first time! I highly recommend this tour to any Gossip Girl fan and I am looking forward to checking out some of the other tours offered such as the ‘Sex and the City’ tour which “follows in the footsteps of Carrie & Co. as they conquer New York City!”
The Gossip Girl tour runs Fridays and Sundays at noon and costs $38 (a bargain considering the tour is 3.5 hours long!). This is a must-do for any Gossip Girl fan!
You can read more about On Location Tours on their website: www.screentours.com