One of the coolest things about living in a city as huge as New York is that if you’re ever bored, you can literally step outside your door and be entertained. I didn’t have anything going on this afternoon, so I decided to head out and explore one of my favorite neighborhoods in Manhattan: the West Village.
Whenever people say they “hate” NYC, I assume they’ve never been to this area. It’s cute, quiet and residential- kind of like a small town within a big city.
My first stop was Grom, a gelato place on Bleecker. I’d walked by a million times but never stopped to try it, but decided it would be the perfect thing on such a hot, sunny day.
I love when people smile for strangers’ pictures. Hello, friend.
After some deliberation over their interesting list of flavors, I eventually chose fruit over chocolate and went with the albicocca, or apricot sorbet.
It literally tasted like the sweetest apricot you could possibly find, just blended up with ice. So, so, so good. That’s all I can say.
I want to go back and try the extra dark chocolate sorbet with chocolate chips, which was my second choice. It’s not often that fruit trumps chocolate, so I’ll have to have them go head to head.
Sorbet in hand, I wandered around until I walked by Hercules Fancy Grocery, which I’d forgotten about. It looks like a deli from the outside, but it’s main business is unique foreign beers. The owner is a super sweet older man who really knows his stuff and loves explaining all the beers to his customers.
I ended up buying two beers I’ve never had before: a Traquair house ale and a Skull Splitter ale, neither of which I’ve tried before. He threw in a beer glass, as well, which was so nice of him!
My last stop was Integral Yoga Natural Foods, which I’d been to a few times in the past but not recently.
Something about health food stores makes me go a little shopping crazy, but amazingly I didn’t go buck wild and only bought the fruit I went in there for- and one tiny little other thing.
Rawtella, or raw vegan Nutella! Obviously I had to try it immediately…
The verdict? It didn’t really taste like Nutella, but it was absolutely amazing in its own right. I should have shelled out the $14 for the full jar so I could have done this:
“ARGHH!! RARR NUTELLA!!”
What’s your favorite thing about where you live?
