Anna Osgoodby :: NYC Living

May has been the month of food festivals for me! This girl is surely not complaining either. As you all probably know by reading my blog.. one of my favorite things about NYC? Definitely the food! The first food festival of the month I went to was called LuckyRice. Some of our friends ended up having an extra couple of tickets so Chris and I were the lucky ones that got to use them!

LuckyRice is a food festival that has been a sold-out event since 2010, celebrating the culture and flavors of Asia. After such success in NYC, the festival is also heading to Los Angeles and Las Vegas this year. 

The event took place in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) in Brooklyn. If you watch Gossip Girl, It was right around the apartment that Dan lives in (little dose of tv facts for you). When they say sold-out event, they really mean sold-out! All of the food tastings took place under the actually bridge and space was pretty tight. When you live in NYC, packed events start to become the norm. Once we tried a variety of bites from amazing restaurants we headed into the other part of the festival. The drink loft! We discovered the area early into the event so we took advantage of cocktail and sake wine samplings before the mob flooded the area as well. 

We wrapped up the evening with a performance from the night festival’s head-lining band, The Notorious MSG. And yes, that is their real name, I couldn’t make it up if I tried!

My friends always give me a hard time because I’m always on the lookout for capturing the city. “There goes Anna being a tourist again!” I get it all the time, but hey when you live in NYC there is so much that I want to share with all of you! Here are some interesting buildings I passed walking around the city recently that caught my eye! I love the city’s mix of vintage and contemporary buildings.

Something I have been wanting to do for awhile is check out the driving range at Chelsea Piers. Confession. I don’t golf (unless you want to count mini golf). I don’t aspire to golf. And, if we’re being completely honest, I fell asleep watching the Masters this year. So why head to the driving range? I’m not sure. Something about hitting a bucket of balls out on the Hudson river just seemed like an alluring idea to try out. So that is just what we did! 

We headed to Chelsea Piers and bought a $25 card for balls, rented a $4 driver and waited for our ticket to be called. We got at the driving range at a great time because they were just about to go to their “off peak” hours, which means the balls were less expensive. When our number was called I was ready to go! Up to the third floor we went. 

When I got up into our post I tried recalling my memory for advice my Aunt Di and Uncle Del gave me the last time I was at the driving range. Feet shoulder width apart, a straight back, and hand over hand? Hopefully my memory didn’t fail me too bad since that was probably at least 10 years ago. What I really remember was that it was an uncomfortable position, and I nailed the uncomfortable part again so that has to count for something right?

Regardless of our poor form, we still had a great time and I only missed the ball a couple of times. I did accidentally hit the poor golf cart driving around collecting the balls though. Oops. Luckily those carts are pretty geared up to deflect the balls so hopefully I wasn’t the first person to do that of the day. I just said I was going to try my best to hit the balls, that aiming thing is a whole other issue!

It was so much fun though! It was pretty cool too because you didn’t actually get a bucket of balls to hit. Instead the tee and ball automatically came up from your post each time after you hit a ball. It was like a whack a mole machine kind of. Hit a ball, another tee and ball came up, hit, ball. It was such a cool view too because the range is floating over the river and you can see New Jersey on the other side. The sun was also starting to set while we were hitting, which made for a pretty beautiful evening. I definitely won’t be going pro anytime soon, but I’m glad we checked it out!