Vacation Review: New York Day 3 (Part 2)
Vacation Review: New York Day 3 (Part 2)
In Part 1 of the Day 3 review I talked about our trip to the Cloisters, owned by the Met. Later that day, we took the subway back down to the upper west side of Central Park, walked through Central Park, grabbed some NY hot dogs, and headed over to the Met. This is another place that can be overwhelming, we could have easily spent three days here alone. But we had done our research online ahead of time so we knew what we wanted to spend time on before we arrived. For us, the focus was on the Greco-Roman sculptures and Egyptian artifacts. As a bonus, the Museum had some fun scavenger hunts for lack of a better term for the kids, one that was centered around Percy Jackson. We also made sure we saw some of the Masters. The kids would repeatedly ask “so, this is a REAL Picasso {or Van Gogh, etc.}?” It was staggering to see the amount of art work the Met has. Enjoy the photos below, my favorite was of the artist who was sketching a picture of the sculpture. Art begetting art.
Vacation Review: New York Day 3 (part 1)
Day Three was Good Friday, an important day in the Church Calendar. Serendipity stepped in and we visited the Cloisters on this day. I say this because we had low expectations about our visit, but, as we were studying medieval times, thought this would be a good place to visit. In the end, it turned out to be a very spiritual experience for us.
Located on four acres overlooking the Hudson River in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park, the building incorporates elements from five medieval French cloisters–quadrangles enclosed by a roofed or vaulted passageway, or arcade–and from other monastic sites in southern France. Three of the cloisters reconstructed at the branch museum feature gardens planted according to horticultural information found in medieval treatises and poetry, garden documents and herbals, and medieval works of art, such as tapestries, stained-glass windows, and column capitals. Approximately five thousand works of art from medieval Europe, dating from about A.D. 800 with particular emphasis on the twelfth through fifteenth century, are exhibited in this unique and sympathetic context. (via http://www.ny.com/museums/cloisters.html )
On Friday morning we hopped on the subway a block from our apartment, and within 20 minutes we were at the northern part of Manhattan island. We had planned on spending an hour or so at the Cloisters, but spent over three hours there. The setting and ambiance put us in a contemplative mood as we wandered through the castle-like structure.
The structure itself is amazing as it made of actual structures of different cloisters including some of the doors, walls, gates, etc.
The garden is very serene too.
But we found the tapestries to be the most impressive pieces. These are very old and very stunning. The scale of these tapestries is incredible, they fill up entire walls in some cases. We also loved seeing some of the pieces from 500-1000 AD, some older. Our favorite piece was a rosary bead about the size of a golf ball with intricate carvings on it.
While I wouldn’t say this is New York’s best kept secret, we went during the week and it was not crowded, and many people we spoke to about it, including locals, gave us a similar response, “I’ve heard about it, but never gone.”
To visitors and locals alike, I say emphatically, “Go.”
Links
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/the_cloisters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloisters
Vacation Review: New York Day 2
In my last post I described day 1 of our trip. Day 1 as I described it was our first full day. We arrived on a Tuesday afternoon and visited Times Square, our Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Trip was on Wednesday. Also, after visiting Ellis Island on Day 1, we then spent some time in the financial district. We saw the World Trade Center, NYSE, and other places in that area. We really liked visiting Trinity Church, the kids thought it was amazing to see the tombstone for Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton among others.
With Day 2, we just rolled out of bed and went over to the Natural History Museum, as our apartment was literally across the street. This was one of my favorite places. The museum received a lot of attention from the movie Night at the Museum, and thankfully the attention is well-deserved. We had a terrific time. The size, scale, and scope of this building is breath-taking.
To maximize your day, I would encourage you to plan ahead. My wife is great at this. She went out to their website and looked at the exhibits with our kids. She also printed off some maps so we could get a sense for how we wanted to go through the building. We were lucky in that the Silk Road Exhibit was there, which is a traveling exhibit that details cities along what was called the Silk Road, going from China to Baghdad.
The permanent exhibits are equally impressive. From ancient civilizations to items from outer space, the museum has plenty to see. My favorite room was the ocean room (I’m sure that’s not its name) with an enormous whale and hundreds of other oceanic creatures.
We spent an entire day there and were exhausted. If we had stayed in NY longer, this could have been a two-day visit for sure. But at the end of the day our brains were mush so we discovered another treasure, an outdoor one: Central Park.
Vacation Review: New York day 1
As our ‘big’ vacation this year, my wife, 3 kids and I, went to New York over spring break. Yes, it was over three months ago, but I decided to not let that stop me. I’ll be posting some reviews of the places we went.
On our first day there we visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
A couple tips:
- Make your reservations well ahead of time so that you can get the time and tour you want. (We had booked for a 2pm ferry ride but the ticket person said if we got there before 8:30 AM we could get on the first ferry even though it was sold out, and she was right.)
- You can choose to go to the island the Statue of Liberty is on, go up to the pedestal area, or go up to the highest point allowed. We chose to go to pedestal which was great. We were inside the statue of liberty and got to look up and see how it was built.
- They have a nice walking museum as you wind your way to the statue that gives you a history of the building of the statue. For instance, I learned that there was terrorism in NJ back in WW1! Some german spies blew up a munitions dump and the blast actually damaged part of the statue.
As much as I loved the Statue of Liberty, the real treat was Ellis Island. Ellis Island was not open as a museum when I visited the Statue of Liberty back in 1981, so this was my first visit. Both my wife and I had relatives that came to America from Ellis Island, so there was a special significance to both of us. Regardless of that connection, the curators have done an amazing job of making this place ‘come to life’ and show what it was like. As an aside, kudos to Francis Ford Coppola. When we got home I put in the first part of The Godfather Part II where Vito Corleone goes through Ellis Island and it matched everything the Ellis Island Museum said, down to checking the immigrants eyes.
The museum has scores of pictures, oral histories in every room, artifacts, a room with a great use of visuals to show the scope of people that came to the island, and a library where you can research your relatives (note, the library is the same access that you can get from the web, but it was still neat to do the research at the island.)
We ended up spending over 3 hours at Ellis Island and I can’t recommend it highly enough. In my head I’m always looking for the educational angle with my kids on our vacations, but I didn’t have to here. I think an old tagline of the History Channel was “Where History comes alive.” The same can be said of Ellis Island.
Then and Now
