Small Town Charm

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I live in the suburbs, but I go to college and [used to] work in the city.  Most of my college buddies are city people; most of the in-state folk live in the same city as our campus, while out-of-state folk live in cities in their home-state.  So when my friends happen to come to my town to visit, they are often pleasantly surprised by the small town charm.

By now, I’m quite used to hearing them excitedly tell me: “it’s so retro and cute!,” “it’s so cute here!,” “this is great!,” or – my favorite of all – “oh this is great!  yeah I’m totally diggin’ this!”

That last one was a new addition to the list of comments I’ve received, made today by one of my girl friends who stopped by my town for some help prepping for her exam.  While I’ve been on vacation for nearly a month now, she’s been retaking a course that she wasn’t able to finish during the semester with the rest of us.  Getting together to help her study also gave us a chance to catch up and talk, since I haven’t seen her since the semester ended.

We met up in a little cafe/deli about 15-20 minutes from my place.  Every time I pass this cafe, it makes me smile a little.  It’s such a cute little shop, and it reminds me of one of my favorite tv series, Gilmore Girls.  For my fellow Gilmore Girls fans: do you remember in season 6, episode 10, when Chris met up with Lorelai to tell her that his grandfather died and that he inherited tons of money from him and wanted to share it with them?  Do you remember the little cafe that they met in to talk about his inheritance?  The cafe/deli that I went to was a quaint little shop that reminded me very much of the unnamed cafe in that particular episode of Gilmore Girls.

For those who haven’t seen the show, I found a trailer of this particular episode here.  And here’s a pic of it:

It’s got the charm of a place like the one above, with furniture like the one below:

I’m a big fan of Gilmore Girls, and I always like to think that my town is my own little real life Stars Hollow.  My town is slightly more city-ish than Stars Hollow however, considering we have more than 5 cars that roam the streets =)