Saturday, August 12 | 11:49 am- Eastern Time
It's our first real day of New York! We woke up at 9, because it felt like 6 to us, since we're still used to Pacific Time.

After some idling around, taking about what to do, and looking around, we decided on a place that was not far from the hotel. On the way, though, we spotted a nice little restaurant called The Red Flame. It was a pretty classic NYC place. I had a bagel with Nova Scotia Lox and cream cheese- it was good! Walked back to the hotel afterwards to regroup and grab our tour tickets. Now we're sitting around thinking about what to do for an hour or so before our tour.

4:17 pm
We headed out to look around Rockefeller Center, since we had sometime. It's really just a big shopping mall inside, so we looked outside! We checked out the area around the fountain, which is iconic and nice.

Rockefeller! The camera is not nearly big enough for the building.

This is the famous fountain and plaza that is frozen over in the winter for the ice rink. Right now, it's a bunch of tables for dining.

We walked down a few blocks to check out the area past Rockefeller, where some well-known companies sell, such as Nintendo, Lego, and American Girl.

CharlotteBeckner we saw a statue of one of the multi-color Splatoon creatures (Inklings? This one was pink) in the Nintendo store. My mom got a picture.

One thing that caught my eye was this cathedral!

I mean, how could you not notice it? It's huge! We went in, and discovered it is St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was pretty and enjoyable. It looks like it's made entirely out of stone, and the designs are amazing.

The altar. Everything was so big and tall! Here's a closer view of the altar.

That's kind of dramatic, actually! As we were heading back, to the exit, we spotted the large organ in the back of the sanctuary.

The blue stained glass had some nice purples and deeper colors, but it didn't show well in the camera. 

We walked back pretty leisurely after that to meet up at the NBC studios store for the tour. No photos or videos were allowed, so I couldn't get anything. We did see several of their studios, which are considerably smaller than they look on TV! We saw the studios for Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Seth Meyers, the Tonight Show, and I think another. There was one we were going to see, but apparently there was "breaking news," so we couldn't go in. (I think it was a car crash) We made our own episode of a show, called "On Air." My dad was the host. XD I got the role of camera operator, which was pretty disappointing, because all we did was stand around, watch, and appear on screen for two seconds.

Got some ice cream from Ben and Jerry's after. Careful- it gets everywhere if you have a cone. We came back to the apartment afterwards to wash up and regroup again. We are probably going to go out again somewhere tonight. Possibly an observation deck. For now, I'm out!

1:04 am
Welp, technically it's the next day, but we stayed up late! We wanted to see Saturday Night Live after seeing the studio on the tour.

What we ended up doing in the evening was going to see a show- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! We walked down to the ticket booth in Times Square, which proved to be an adventure on its own. Its so busy- all the crowds and lights and businesses.

We did get tickets! On the way to the theater I saw the theater where Hamilton is showing. Wish we were seeing that.

There was a large line outside the door, as you can probably see.

The seats we got were actually really good for rush tickets- we sat in maybe the fourth row from the front, center! We thought it would have been nice to be a few rows back, but when we saw the show, I thought our seats were great! You can really see the details and actor's expressions. We couldn't see the stage floor, so I don't know if we missed out on anything there.

The show was a lot of fun. So much was different from Willy Wonka Jr, but I guess that's to be expected. They did delete some scenes and add others to the original plot, and so many of the songs were new. The only thing I'm going to spoil is at the very end, during the curtain call, purple streamers FELL FROM THE CEILING!!! We grabbed a few. :)

It was awesome!!! My mom got some wine at the show, and they gave her this cool little cup. I'm keeping it!

It's got one of those lids you can twist to close! We had to walk back through Times Square to get back to the hotel. It looks cool at night!

There's the Statue of Liberty in Times Square... wait, what?! XD there were several people in costume- two Spider-Man's, Minnie Mouse, Olaf and Anna, and probably more.

Times Square. Came back to the hotel and got a snack at the restaurant/bar they have. It was good shrimp tempura!

We had to rush upstairs to the room to be on time for SNL. It just finished, so, ugh, it's late. I'm going to bed. G'night!