Little Village Letdown

As winter approaches, Eddie and I like to zig zag across New York City to see all the glittery sparkly things.  I make a plan and Eddie says, Okay.  These endeavors involved lots of walking, and somehow over the past three years, we've been SantaCon adjacent, going to the city and saying, Hey there are a lot of people dressed up like Santa today only to find out that it was indeed SantaCon.

This year was a little different.  We did not go during SantaCon, mostly because it's unplanned and we just happened to choose the weekend before it.  Also, the goal was only one place: the holiday shops at Union Square. 

Because the night was not very wintery weather-wise, we decided to walk down to Union Square.  We did so without incident.  That rarely  happens.  Eddie found the shops because he's tall and was able to see the booths from about a block away.  The first booth was for wine.  I waited.  Then I waited.  Oh, then there was more waiting.  There weren't a lot of people tasting, but for some reason, it was taking a very very long time.  So I decided not to wait anymore and we went off to see what the other booths had to offer.  Besides, the only drink I really wanted was cider.  Hot apple cider with a cinnamon stick.  That would make me happy.

We saw booths that had all kinds of trinkets and knick-knacks, all over-priced.  Lots of hand-made blankets and ornaments.  Several Eastern inspired Zen shops.  A lot of gourmet food booths.  Lots of pretty little things to look at overall.  After "window" shopping, I found a booth that had cider.  Oooh, exciting.  We waited on a long line in a very crowded area on a set of stairs.  Then they said, We don't have cider right now.  Umm, okay.  They said they would have it in twenty minutes.  We were not going to wait on the crowded stairs for twenty minutes, so we went to see more booths and more trinkets.

Oooh, a second booth with cider.  We walked up and stood on a short line. The cider was warming up.  We would have to wait.  Um, no.

One booth caught my eye.  They were selling lockets with these really pretty pictures of the city and also some rustic ones--a chair in a forest, a bike on the side of a road.  The lockets were in different sizes and they also had them on coasters and other items.  I oohed and ahhed over the lockets, but knew that I wasn't planning to spend that much money on something I knew wouldn't look quite right on me.  I needed something in between the sizes they had.  Eddie was like, You should just get it--it's probably only like 17 - 18 dollars.  I laughed at him and was like, No they're going to be a lot more than that.  He was like, No way.  I was like, Ask.  So he did.  "75 for the larger ones.  45 for the smaller ones."  He said, Okay thank you.  Then he looked at me and said, Those aren't Brooklyn prices.  No, no they are not.

So we continued on the quest for cider.  Two more booths claimed to have cider.  Neither one delivered.  So we wound up taking the subway back uptown because we were both starving by then.  We got our meals at Penn Station.  I got a chocolate-vanilla swirled frozen yogurt.  He got a personal Pizza Hut pizza, for which he had to wait seven minutes because apparently, no one wanted to give us what we ordered right away.

We also caught some great entertainment in the form of Kahn The Sugarbear Hightower, who not only sings, but dances.  Dude's got moves.  We stuck around for three songs.  I friended him on Facebook because he told everyone to. 

So the glitter pretty sparkly search in the city wasn't the greatest experience, but at least we saw pretty lights, some solid standbys.

Empire State Building

Tree near Amtrak in Penn Station

The moral of this story: You don't need to leave Penn Station to have a good time in Manhattan.