Something Smells Really Good in Bernardston, Massachusetts

It's the Kringle Candle Company!

You've all heard of Yankee Candle. Well, the son of the guy who founded Yankee Candle has created a beautiful family-friendly destination right up the road from his father's former creation. Locally, there is a Kringle Candle store located in The Stamford Town Center

It's called Kringle Candle, and it's a great day-trip destination for candle-loving families! Located in Bernardston, Massachusetts, the Kringle Candle flagship store is the "Local" answer to the now "National" Yankee Candle brand. The Yankee Candle flagship store is in nearby South Deerfield, Massachusetts, and it's a beautiful destination. Kringle Candle is a scaled-down version of the huge tourist-trap that Yankee Candle's has become.

You feel like you stepped back into the 70's in Northern Massachusetts, it's quiet, there's really no traffic, the air smells like pine needles, and granola-eating hippies line the streets with their bicycles and biodegradable backpacks. Why not walk into a huge retail facility and smell incredible scents and browse luxurious handmade products on a Saturday with Mrs. Large???

Beautifully appointed rooms are lined with thousands of candles for you to sniff. Local New England products abound, from home decor, to cocktail napkins with snazzy lettering and print. Of course, I went directly to the "Man Candles" and food products. I love woodsy/earthy candles, and my favorite Yankee Candle has always been MidSummer Night . Kringle's answer to my favorite scent is simply - Midnight - and it's a scent that makes me happy. So, I got one of those!

My other favorite finds were these Southern Fried Peanuts from The Peanut Trading Company . Oh man, I read the label saying to eat them "shell-n-all", and I was not looking forward to flossing for an hour, fishing fibers out of my molars. Wow! Very tasty! And, like the label says, you can eat them "shell-n-all". The other thing I got was a local Vermont dip mix--

a Halladay's Harvest Farm Caramelized Onion dip. Extremely tasty!

All in all, it was a great day. Kringle Candle's flagship store also has a section devoted to toys for the kids, a bed and bath section, a chocolate annex featuring exotic chocolates from around the world, and a very nice new snack bar that serves simple refreshments. If you can handle the almost two hour drive from Western Ct, and you savor exotic, luxurious scents, I highly recommend Kringle Candle and their family-friendly, locally-intensive flagship store.

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