Christmas Spirit in New York City
I had been dreaming of experiencing a New Yorker's Christmas for as long as I could remember. Every Christmas since I was young my Grandad would play Frank Sinatra on the record player while my family sat around the stone fireplace and spent time together. I always loved his music, especially New York, New York and I couldn't wait to grow up and see the big city for the holidays.
As soon as we got out of the cab at Grand Central Station I could feel the Christmas spirit in the crisp, cold air. As we wandered in, I saw garnish hanging over the marvellous staircases and I couldn’t help but picture all of the famous Hollywood movies that had taken place there. We walked around the city for a while, taking in the magnificent Rockefeller Centre Christmas tree and the colourfully decorated windows of Saks 5th Avenue. In the afternoon we headed over the Brooklyn bridge to the apartment we rented for our trip.
On our first trip over to New York last summer we hadn’t experienced Brooklyn so we spent the first night eating delicious veggie burgers and salad at Trix restaurant and spent the rest of the night dancing to some live music at Skinny D’s.
The next morning we made our way to the New York Public Library. This stunning piece of architecture is my favourite place in Manhattan, there is free entry and you can spend as much time marvelling at the incredible detail as you’d like. It was extra special seeing the library decorated with lights and a grand Christmas tree that lit up the entire front entrance hall. I am also a huge Sex and the City fan so I was overjoyed to be able to stand where Carrie Bradshaw stood when she was supposed to marry Big! After a few hours of roaming he library we headed out to find the brownstone in West Village where Sex and the City filmed Carrie Bradshaw's apartment and the famous building from the show Friends.
The remainder of the time we spent wandering the city exploring new areas and eating everything that we could. We walked through Central Park and watched the snow fall and cover the park and went in and out of small Christmas markets selling all kinds of winter goods. In Greenwich there was a great Mexican restaurant called Caliente Cab that had amazing buffalo cauliflower tacos.
On our last day we walked through Williamsburg again and stopped at the Big Whiskey restaurant which had the best vegan sandwich I have ever tried. It was a whiskey rib vegan sandwich covered with BBQ sauce and vegetables. They had many other vegetarian and vegan options such as any burger replaced with a veggie burger, deep fried pickles (one of my favourite snacks of all time), mozzarella sticks and seitan strips. I would highly recommend this place!
Christmas in New York was everything I hoped for and more and it is an experience everyone should have!