Day 1 of BlogHer can be summarized by the word: full!

It started with the newbie breakfast. It was hard to get up after staying up late going to a diner the night before! It was also confusing because none of the conference guides online included the location of anything – only the event. So I had to sort of wander around 3 floors looking and asking people.

After the newbie breakfast there honestly weren’t any sessions I was super interested in, so I used that time plus the lunch break to walk with Christian and Garrett over to Times Square. We ate another round of falafel and sat on Broadway watching people.

I haven’t been to NYC since they closed off Broadway like that, and I really like the environment it has created! We looked for the Naked Cowboy but never saw him. We did see the Granny Peace Brigade, who was raising awareness of the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

I tried to go to some sessions in the afternoon, and I enjoyed Liz Henry‘s Geek Lab “Fight Spam and Hackers! Plugging Security Holes in Your Social Media Life”. I think I have become a Liz Henry fan! I also enjoyed the blog post she read at the evening keynote (and I love her hair).

I left that session a little early because I’d been getting Twitters from BumGenius founder that she was in the Expo Hall and I really wanted to meet her! Unfortunately, after spending 30 minutes in the Expo Hall I never found her. * sad face *

I did find Mrs. Potato Head.

So, I was a little late to the next session and it turned out it was so full that I was unable to hear anything from as far away as I was. This was disappointing because it was a panel about taking better pictures, and you know I suck at this.

Instead, I took a nap for a little while, then went to the end-of-day keynote. I really enjoyed hearing bloggers read their own posts. They were sad and funny and surprising!

After the keynote, I joined Christian and Garrett again and we got on the subway and traveled to a ramen shop Christian had seen on Japan TV. It was good ramen!

When we were super full, we headed over to the Empire State Building. I had heard that at night, the lines are shorter. I am not sure if this is correct – is waiting an hour and a half considered a short line? I was pretty tired by the time we got to the top. After all that waiting, this is the view I had:

It was so crowded, I couldn’t really see over the side at all unless I wanted to elbow my way in. After a while I went ahead and did that, and got a few slightly better shots.

Then we went home and went to sleep!!