Located right behind the New York Public Library, Bryant Park has a bunch of little tiny shops in these little glass booths, all centered around an outside ice-skating rink. These little shops range from candle shops, to clothing stores, to art stores, to exquiste food options. My favorite two stores to go to is a popcorn store that has all different flavors of popcorn, and Max Brennan: The Chocolate Guy, where I get a syringe of like a quart of milk chocolate, (I swear to God!)
(When I tell you guys that its the best chocolate that you will ever eat, I mean that seriously. My family literally used to get in the car on a Saturday night, drive the twenty-five minutes or so into the city, go to Bryant Park, go in, buy five or so syringes of this stuff, eat them, then leave, and if we were too late, and the shops were closed, then we would drive downtown to the actual store of Max Brennan, and buy them there. Like its the only acceptable time and place to be walking around New York City with a huge syringe filled with a brown substance! I know someone, somewhere, has a photo of me eating from one of these things... but I don't really care!)
This is a nice place to go to with a bunch of friends on a Friday night, and just walk around for hours. You can sit under the gleaming lights of the Bank of America Building, and through the spaces in between the buildings, you see the gleaming multi-colored lights of Times Square. You can look at the Empire State Building from a about ten blocks away, and faintly see tiny flashes of cameras on the observation deck. It is incredible that right near the heart of the busiest city in the world, there can be so much calm and stillness, as faint Christmas music rolls through the space, and people just live life in the moment.
I love this season, one of the main reasons why, is because of Bryant Park being available to use in this way. The Park is open all the time, but the stores are only open from the middle of November, to the middle of February, so it loses its charm in a way. There is nothing like Christmas in New York City, but there is also nothing like Bryant Park around Christmastime, so get there while the stores are still open!
Have you ever been to Bryant Park? Does it sound like the type of place you would want to go and visit?
Peace and Love,
DGS
Quotes of the Day: "I went to New York City, to be born again." - Kurt Vonnegut
"New York City is the only real city" - Truman Capote