A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours Celebrates Nine Year Anniversary

"Manhattan? FUHGETTABOUDIT!" That's the official slogan of A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours (http://www.asliceofbrooklyn.com) as they celebrate their 9th anniversary taking tourists from around the world on authentic guided bus tours of NYC's most populous borough.

Started in 2005 by native Brooklynite Tony Muia, the family-run company is the only NYC based tour company conducting guided bus tours featuring Brooklyn's favorite foods, neighborhoods, landmarks and famous movie locations.

"I wanted to create an easy way for visitors to hop on a bus in Manhattan and experience Brooklyn from a native's perspective." says owner/operator Tony Muia. "When I started doing tours nine years ago, Brooklyn wasn't as hot as it is now. Nobody was bothering to go pick people up in Manhattan and bring them to Brooklyn, so I took it upon myself to be its official ambassador."

Since then over 50,000 people have been introduced to the borough through Muia's tours which have been featured on the Today Show, the Travel Channel and the Food Network and have been voted the #1 tour of Brooklyn on Tripadvisor for the past three years in a row!

Dubbed "Mister Brooklyn himself" by NBC's Today Show, Muia started with the wildly popular A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour which features stops at Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge for their award winning Neapolitan-style pizza as well as L&B Spumoni Gardens in Gravesend for their legendary Sicilian-style pizza. Also included is an audio-visual tour of the borough along with stops at Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Coney Island boardwalk. Movie locations on the tour include Saturday Night Fever, Goodfellas, The French Connection and more

Then came the Neighborhood Tour which features areas like the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Green-Wood Cemetery, the Barclays Center, the original location of Ebbets Field where the Brooklyn Dodgers once played along with movie locations from Moonstruck, The Godfather, As Good As it Gets and more. Included on the tour is a stop for a sit down lunch at the original Junior's on Flatbush Avenue which includes pastrami sandwiches along with their world famous cheesecake and an egg cream for dessert.

One of their most popular tours is the Christmas Lights and Cannoli Tour which features the world famous Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn. That's the Italian-American section of Brooklyn that takes on the nickname "Dyker Lights" every December as over 100,000 people from around the country and around the world descend upon the area to see the most over-the-top Christmas decorations. Included is a stop after the lights for cannoli and hot chocolate from Villabate Pastry Shop. Tony and the tour were featured on Samantha Brown's "Holidays in New York" special in December of 2010 as Tony escorted Samantha through the area to meet the homeowners.

Besides doing tours for the general public, Muia and his tour guide Paula (Tony's cousin and another native Brooklynite) act as hop-on guides for tour operators from around the country who come to NYC with their own buses every year. It's a family run business so you might even see Tony's Uncle Louie get in on the act from time to time greeting customers.

"The best part about doing tours of Brooklyn has been showing people who've never been to Brooklyn how easy it is to get here, how wonderfully unique all the neighborhoods are, how many classic movies were filmed here and how much history and great food sits just across the river from Manhattan." Adds Muia, "Ah, who am I kidding? The best part is hearing them say 'Manhattan? FUHGETTABOUDIT!'"