Another awesome night out that we had last year was when we visited Eataly and then went up to PaintAlong NYC for a painting class.
Owned by Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali, Eataly has been open for a while and we still had not got the chance to visit. It is basically a huge Italian specialty food store with multiple restaurants right across from the Flatiron building.
It was almost like being back in Rome! We were able to stock up on some beautiful specialties as they had a sale on when we were there.
Here is a little tour –
We got some pizza at the restaurant La Pizza & La Pasta – it was REALLY good. Simple and delicious food. It was a little pricey but it was fine for a special night out. I couldn’t see it as our local Italian place if we still lived in Chelsea.
After dinner we wandered outside and sat on the border of Madison Square Park just passing the time until our painting class.
We don’t do this often enough. It was so relaxing… could you ever get sick of this view?
We wandered up Lexington and picked up some Tasti D-Lite. It was so perfect as it really was an ice cream kind of night! I wish we had one near us… but then again maybe that it is a good idea that we don’t.
PaintAlong was one of the most enjoyable activities I’ve done in a a long time. I have never painted before but walking into the studio, everything was set up for us. You basically walk in, paint with an instructor and go home. No setting up, no cleaning up – you are just there to focus on your painting.
One thing that surprised me, even though I was concentrating on trying to do it right, it was really relaxing. There were about 15 people in our class and we all just did our thing. It was very interesting to see how they broke up the painting into parts so we could get the final result. I didn’t do very well on the sun part of my painting, but I did better with the reflection in the water and silhouette of the trees.
If you are in New York and looking to do something a little different, PaintAlong is really good fun. I didn’t think I did too bad considering I’ve never picked up a brush and it was done in two hours!
The only problem was when we jumped into the cab on the way home, I was already trying to work out what to do with two of the same painting. As a result, one is now hanging near my desk in the library and Bill has his on display in his cubicle. It doesn’t really match our ‘look’ at home!