A Road Less Taken

A view of the Cloisters with the Hudson River

I cannot upload photos from my camera to the computer I'm using while in New York. I will make a file (a post) of photos I took here when I return to Toronto.

But, there are plenty of online images to download.

I tried to get to the Cloisters today. They are a branch of the Metropolitan Museum, but they are somewhere in the Netherlands of New York City. They are located in an area called Fort Tyron Park. The closest street intersection is 190th Street. I'm not sure if this is the Bronx, or if it is still Harlem, but I decided to take the M4 bus which supposedly goes straight there. It didn't happen so easily.

There was some kind of parade (actually it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade, or more precisely the National Puerto Rican Day Parade - what is "national" about Puerto Ricans in New York?) which held up buses between 44th and 79th on Fifth Avenue. At one point I waited close to half an hour to get a bus. When one finally arrived and we climbed on, we had to get off on 135th Street because...well the driver couldn't give a reason. He parked the bus and waited inside. Then this parked bus suddenly took life, and the patient group that was waiting for another (some people just left - to catch a cab?!) was allowed back on this one.

But it really was worth the wait. The ride on the M4 from about 135th street down to 79th was incredible. The bus went down Riverside Drive, along the Hudson and past the beautiful Riverside Church (which I think is even more beautiful than St. Patrick's, or St. John the Divine's just above 110th Street) until the driver turned on 79th Street and took Broadway. I went all the way to 59th Street and Columbus Circle and took the M10 down Central Park West, to get more views of another of New York's beautiful park. I got off just before 110th Street, where Central Park ends, to get to where I was staying on the Upper West Side. The ride took shorter than I thought, although it is a good 45 minutes. I highly recommend this "tour" for a mere bus token ($2.25). There were plenty of tourist buses taking a similar route, and I'm sure their's was an expensive affair.

A view of the Riverside Church with the Hudson River

One of the reasons I wanted (want) to go to the Cloisters is to see the beautiful unicorn tapestries.

The Unicorn in Captivity
At The Cloisters

(I've linked to backgrounds on The Cloisters and the tapestries, but I will write some more tomorrow on how they got to New York and to such a location. It is a fascinating bit of New York history.)