Offering the Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Princeton

Mimi Omiecinski is pure energy and charm, her southern voice and gift of gab giving away her southern roots in Nashville, followed by a successful career in Atlanta in marketing and sales management.

No surprise, then, that she met her husband Steve on a plane on a business trip. They both were quite the world travelers, and it was on those trips, logging all those miles, that she discovered there was no place on the globe quite like Princeton.

“I planned a weekend trip and stayed at the Nassau Inn,” said Omiecinski. “I fell in love with the town so I called Steve in Japan and I said 'this is the place.'”

Since 2006, Princeton has been home for the Omiecinski family which includes son Stosh. Omiecinski found herself constantly talking to friends and family about her adopted hometown.

“It got to the point where I wouldn’t shut up about Princeton and I figured I wouldn’t have any friends left so I had to start a business. I’ve been strangely possessed. There’s no place like Princeton that offers the mix of fascinating history, great food, folklore, culture and interesting places that this town does.”

In 2008, she started the Princeton Tour Company.  “It was supposed to be a hobby, something fun,” said Omiecinski. “ My husband said it would be cheaper than tennis lessons.”

What started out as bicycle tours has morphed over the last three years into walking tours, pub crawls, haunts of the literary greats, and even ghost tours, added when one of her tourists told her he could see ghosts.

“He told me this place is teeming with ghosts,” she explained. “He helped me figure out a ghost tour that is quintessentially Princeton. After all, Princeton University proved that paranormal activity exists, so why wouldn’t there be ghosts here?”

Omiecinski also offers something called a corporate responsibility tour. “It’s the Princeton tour, but what you would have paid to us, you donate to a local nonprofit. It gives corporations a chance to go outside their normal comfort zone of where they give their money.”

The majority of the Princeton Tour Company’s clients come from New York or about an hour away. Every so often local day trippers drop in with family and friends from out of town looking for a uniquely Princeton experience. There are also many national and international travelers, drawn in by great reviews, including ratings as the #1 Attraction on Trip Advisor and the New York Times.  

“People who drop in to Princeton don’t know where Tortuga’s (Mexican Village) is located,” said Omiecinski. “They don’t know about Small World, Hoagie Haven, Bent Spoon, Olives, all the things we know just from living here. They don’t know about Cotsen Library which is fabulous for kids.  If you’re in the area, we tell them the things they don’t want to miss but might not think about, like taking in a Trenton Thunder game in the spring and summer. In pumpkin and apple season, you just have to head to Terhune Orchards.”

The success of Omiecinski’s business hinges in part on the fact that she is the kind of person you’d like to have as a best friend showing you her favorite places.  When it comes to Princeton, she is virtually a one-woman Chamber of Commerce. She freely talks up other Princeton merchants and has fashioned partnerships with them. She is in the process of co-writing a book about Princeton, an insider’s guide that she hopes to have out by the end of the year or early in 2012.

“It will be like finding that really good friend in Princeton,” she said, “Someone who can tell you how to get affordable tickets for the McCarter Theatre, how to dress like a Nobel Prize winner and explain why Princeton’s fireworks are not held on the 4th of July. We want outsiders to feel like insiders.”

Website: www.princetontourcompany.com

Email: info@princetontourcompany.com

Phone: 609-902-3637