Guest Post: A Town Called Cold Spring by Rohini Wahi

Rohini is a both a fellow blogger and a friend. She writes the lovely lifestyle and interiors blog The Beat That My Heart Skipped and very kindly offered to write a post for us from her summer holiday to the East Coast of America.

You can read about her weekend in the Hamptons here and there will be more posts from her trip over the next few weeks.

Over to Rohini to tell us about the wonderfully named Cold Spring – I don’t know about you, but I want to move there….

During our trip to the East Coast we packed in visits with a lot of friends from Central Park to Bushwick to the East Village and it seemed that the buzzword of the moment was ‘Upstate’. The hipster crowd were all either planning long weekends ‘Upstate’, had just come from fabulous restorative getaways ‘Upstate’ or had friends who had just moved ‘Upstate’ to larger homes and were living the dream. Towns like Saugerties, Phoenixa, The Catskills and Woodstock were on the exodus list – boasting more space, more natural terrain and a slower pace of life.

One of these such towns on my bucket list was the mythically titled Cold Spring. An hour and ten minutes on the train from Grand Central Station – the small and perfectly formed town serves as a weekend getaway for many New Yorkers with charming painted and slatted homes dotting its leafy avenues, and the majestic Storm King Mountain and the Hudson River
serving as an idyllic background. Attracting visitors is the town’s charming Main Street – perfectly curated by the right amount of antique stores, design stores, homespun eateries and the store that drew my attention to the town, Cold Spring Apothecary.
To me it seemed to me like Soho or upscale Brooklyn had been scooped up and nestled into rugged terrain – I could see why every trendy New Yorker was flocking here…

A village whose Police Station has paper pom pom’s in windows is a village that I want to live in!

We stopped for wholesome and tasty fare at the charming Hudson Hil’s cafe. The cafe was bright, simple and clean with white fretwork and a cute swinging porch door. We ate ‘Shrimp Poor-boys’ (Shrimp dredged in a spicy corn meal mixture and fried with a tangy Asian coleslaw and Cajun aioli) and Aarya chowed down on buttermilk pancakes.

One of the best things about the town was its General Store – fascinating to me in itself because they are so unique to the US and historically have been the cornerstone and hub of American communities. Appealing to a new generation The Cold Springs General Store opened in 2013 and is run by a couple who moved to the town from Brooklyn. I could have spent the whole day there – it had the most up to the minute artisan food items, gifts and household goods from some of the State’s best brands, knick knacks that made any desk/dining table/shelf instantly cooler and rugged charm by the armful.

The rest of the street was lined with beautifully styled antique shops, more household stores and irreverent business like Doug’s Pretty Good Pub.

Of course we stopped at Cold Spring Apothecary. A modern-day apothecary for remedy based hair, skin and body products. All hand made in small batches the range was created by Stacey Dugliss-Wesselman whilst working as a hair stylist in Brooklyn. With a background in both cosmetology and nursing, she began sharing with her clients the blends of oils and remedies she’d concocted. The space is beautiful and homely and makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into the real life shop that Sandra Bullock’s character owned in Practical Magic!

We visited the town with our friend Olivia who lives in Manhattan and takes any opportunity to visit Cold Spring. It was her fifth trip to the town since her move to Manhattan last year! We’re thinking of doing a house exchange next year in the States and this place came up at the top of our list… so close to Manhattan but with its own magnetism that would make me not want to leave…

Cold Spring you have my heart!

Aarya, Rohini and Olivia

Thanks Rohini – I’m off to look at flights………