The Cloisters: They're Cloisterrific.

It was a gorgeous, spring-like day here in New York, and I spent it up at the Cloisters, a nifty wing of the Metropolitan Museum that lives waaaay uptown in Fort Tryon Park. The museum building is an authentic medieval cloister that's been transported from whatever European country it was from and plopped down on a tidy piece of New York real estate overlooking the Hudson River.

This was my third time to the Cloisters since I've been in New York. My visits to the Cloisters are always very purposeful, which is understandable, since it's pretty far to travel as far as Things in Manhattan go. My first time there was during my freshman year of college, when a teacher of mine had our class go up to the Cloisters to sketch. The architecture up there is amazing, to say nothing of the artwork within it, and there is a particular set of arched windows that funnels the sunlight in this unbelieveably spectacular way. That's what I sketched my freshman year of college, I remember.

My second trip to the Cloisters was one summer a year or so later, when I was working as an RA for a group of high school kids (we affectionately called them the "grommets") who spent their summer studying theatre at NYU. We took the grommets up there, and I still have visions of them frolicking along the stone terraces of the building.

Today's jaunt up to the Cloisters was on a date with a very nice boy. But since my identity on this blog is about as transparent as tap water, that's all you're going to read about that. ;)

The moral of today's blog entry? Go up to the Cloisters. It's beautiful and romantic and peaceful. And the train ride there goes remarkably fast, especially when you're on a date with a very nice boy.