Several months ago, I applied to get tickets to THE VIEW. My mom's a big fan, and with this season's addition of Whoopi and Sherri Sheperd to the all-female gab-fest, I've become something of a convert myself (okay, I DVR the show every day). Anyway, a few weeks ago Joe and I were in the living room and I queued up that day's episode. Then I thumbed through the mail and to my surprise, saw I had an envelope from THE VIEW. Turns out I'd gotten four tickets to the May 20th show - and they'd arrived just in time to be (part of) my mom's Mother's Day present.

So on Monday, the four of us - my parents, Joe, and me - loaded up our stuff and drove to New York. The plan was to go up a day early, have dinner that night with my godmother and her husband, and then be ready to arrive at THE VIEW super-early - thereby insuring good seats. Mark, my stepfather, had booked us two hotel rooms - only, it turns out our rooms were less hotel than they were hostel:



That was the entire length of our room, by the way. Behind me there was a small TV and a mini-fridge. Notice that there's no bathroom. That's because the place where we stayed had communal bathrooms where - and no, I'm not making this up - you were expected to bring your own private roll of toilet paper and mini-soap and hand towel each and every time you needed to use the can. (The hotel was gracious enough to supply each person with said TP, mini-soap, and assortment of towels.)

It didn't help that the boy and I had forgotten to pack Travel Scrabble, either. We spent the time before dinner watching DR. PHIL and JUDGE JUDY while lying on beds so thin they felt like plywood. Talk about roughing it!

Dinner was at Carmine's, a family-style Italian restaurant. We had awesome calamari, yummy lasagna and penne in vodka sauce, and the most excellent tiramisu (or as my mom tends to call it, "terra-mitzu," thereby making it a Japanese delicacy) EVER. My godmother, Jan, and my mom have been friends since they went to summer camp together at age nine, and Tony, Jan's husband, is hysterically funny. Tragic that the night ended with Joe and me trying to sleep on our matching prison-issue twin beds with scratchy plaid comforters.

The next morning, we were up and out by 7:30. Mark miraculously found a free parking space directly across the street from the studio, and we stood there in blustery cold until 9, when we were ushered into a lobby and stood until we were checked in, then stood in line for a security check, then were herded into another standing-room-only holding pen until 10:30. Finally, we took an elevator up to the stage. When we got off, we were handed juice and cookies, and this is the first thing we saw:



ZOMG!

As fate would have it, we got seats in the third row, right in the center. We had to do a lot of clapping for a warm-up comedian, and there was some bad singing and even worse dancing (don't ask), but eventually it was time for the show (which is filmed live, by the way). Some dorky part of me got a little teary-eyed the minute the ladies walked out onto the set, though I'm not exactly sure why.

The first "hot topic" of the day was a question Whoopi posed about what women should say to their daughters about Hillary, especially if she doesn't secure the nomination. And Joy, who often grates on my nerves, says, "You tell her a man took it away from a woman, and then they yelled at her for complaining about it. In other words, you tell the truth."



(In searching for an accurate wording of that quote, I found this recap of yesterday's show, which is way more complete than anything I could write.)

We were allowed to take pictures during most of the commercial breaks. Here's my favorite of the foursome:



Guests included Anderson Cooper, who's a lot shorter than he looks, and Dr. Nancy Snyderman, who talked about medical myths. Everyone in the audience was given a gift certificate to get a scooter and a copy of Dr. Nancy's book.

It was, in short, pretty fabulous.

The one sour note in the whole thing was that Whoopi was putting on a bit of diva behavior. The girls had to shoot this introduction for a charity event Joy was working, and they messed it up and Whoopi tried to make it funny. The producer didn't like her take on it, and asked them to shoot a more "straight" version. Whoopi was irritated and, on the reshoot, delivered her lines totally deadpan, then looked at the producer pointedly. Yowzers! Get that woman some coffee, STAT.



Turns out they were taping a second show that day, so maybe that's why the Whoopster was cranky.

We drove home in driving rain, with aching backs and tired eyes, but it was so totally worth it - every minute.