hello again! we've been in a little bit of a wireless dearth lately, hence the lull in updating. however we discovered a connection we can jump on in one corner of the house, so here i am!
we are now in toronto, staying with mark's rellies here. we're with anty joyce in a condo on the twentieth floor with amazing views of the city - mark is having a swim in the pool downstairs as i type this. it's indoors and heated, as the weather is markedly different from new york - cold, though not unbearable. today we're having a quiet one at home, though we will be heading out to see some comedy tonight. actually, speaking of comedy, we saw some stand-up in nyc too - wandered in to caroline's in times square and happened to catch the fianls of the andy awards - like raw comedy, except in the spirit of andy kaufmann's style - so, no cussing, no disrespectin', clean comedy. it was fun - andy's brother, sister and dad also made appearances.
anyhoo, canada - so far we've seen the niagara falls, which was just amazing, even without the maid of the mist boat ride. most of the touristy things were closed, but that didn't bother us - the off-season thing also meant that there were minimal crowds. after the falls we wandered around in a little township called niagara one the lake, which was quaint and villagey in an olinda kind of way, but colder! we took lots of photos, but at the moment we're not having too much luck uploading them. yesterday we visited the mcmichael canadian art collection, in kleineberg, which houses a lot of amazing inuit and indian art, together with works by a group of canadian artists who call thmeselves the 'group of seven'. also really interesting were the largem, bright works by native indian artist norvel morrisseau. great artwork, and a really lovely gallery.
now, prompted my loren's message on the last post, i will deliver some updates on the sex & the city tour. we started out at the pulitzer fountain (the one used in 'friends', apparently) across the road from the plaza hotel - the very place where mr. big and carrie run into each other after his engagement to natasha, the stick insect with no soul. anyway, it was raining so hard that my umbrella got blown inside out a couple of times, and my jeans were soaked to the knee even before we got on the bus. anyhoo, mark left me there and went to see 'the bodies' exhibit at south wharf. there were a few of us on the tour and the guide was perky, albeit full of bad 'sex' puns. i set my expectation-meter to low, and off we went.
the series was filmed all over new york, so there was pretty much non-stop commentary the whole way through. we saw the exteriors of samantha and carrie's apartments - samanthat's red door in the meat packing district is actually just a 2 storey place that is definitely not apartments. like carrie's stoop, it is only used for outdoor shots. a lot of the paris scenes were shot in the same neighbourhood as carrie's stoop. we each got given a cupcale from the magnolia bakery, and we got to wander in the sex shop where the girls buy their 'rabbits'. oh,m and remember that story about me squeezing the guts out of the frog in that 'sharper image' store? turns out that was the one where samantha returned her 'massager' because it 'failed to get her off'. hehe! we saw the place that was used as aidan's furniture shop, the park with the markets where carries confronts nina katz (the face girl), and the park where elizabeth taylor gets a lot of attention (she was charlotte's dog, remember?). we saw the gallery that was the one charlotte worked in, the gym where miranda meets the guy whose kid likes to press the lift buttons, and the store where charlotte and trey (and bunny) buy their bed. i didn;t take too many piucs cause it was pouring rain unfortunately. but there are a few tidbits of behind-the-scenes info stuck in my memory, though -
- sarah jessica parker and the actor that plays her gay best friend, stanford, have been friends for ages, having met on the child-actor circuit. they made a promise back then that if one of them hit the big time, they'd take the other with them... and also, the guy that plays stanford is actually straight.
- initially, samantha was going to be younger than everyone else, but it didn't work on test audiences.
- both kim cattrall and kristin davis auditioned for the role of carrie.
- remember the ep. where mr big buys carrie that ugly duck-shpaed handbag? well, apparently the pr person for the label that designed the bag lost their job after that episode aired, beacuse the girls spend the whole ep making fun of the bag. no-one would let their product appear on the show after that, for fear that their brand would be made fun of.
- the ep. where carrie goes on a date with new york, and goes to the paris cinema to see 'joy for two' (for one!) - sjp she actually found out she was pregnant just before they filmed that scene.
- the scene where carrie runs into aidan on the street, and aidan turns around and has a baby strapped to his front? that baby is sjp's actual son, hence his total change in demeanour when aidan turns around to face carrie. (i guessed this when i saw that scene at home, watch it again if you can, it's very cute).
ok, that's enough of that - i could go on but i just realised maybe i'm a little obsessed.
we have access to a great connection now - i wrote the forst part of this blog at aunty joyce's, but we're at uncle paul's house as i type - so photos from nyc have been uploaded. will get onto the canada ones soon.