Steinway Street: Visiting the Cloisters

SFS and I took advantage of the wonderful weather this weekend by heading to the cloisters. Have you heard of it? The Met website describes it as:

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.

How's THAT for an explanation? In order to get to the Cloisters, you have to take the A Train to 190th Street, and walk through Fort Tryon Park. Here's our first view of the museum as we walked through the park. See it in the distance?

After a little more walking, we were finally upon it.

SFS took over the camera for a bit. He snapped some photos of this graffiti-ed tree. He also took some pics of garbage cans, but those didn't quite make it to this post.

Yes, I'm a complete ham... like you didn't know that already!

This was the first chapel we saw. NOTE: You're allowed to take pictures in The Cloisters (amazing, right?), but you can't use a flash. If things are a little fuzzy, I'm sorry!

A few minutes after we arrived, we joined a museum staffer for a lecture on the gardens. We stuck around for the first 20 minutes, and then struck out on our own.

There was so much interesting, sacred art!

SFS got this shot of a GIANT fireplace.

There were tons of tapestries lining the walls. This one dates from the 11th Century!

A statue of Baby Jesus.

This is one of the outdoor cloisters, with an ornamental garden.

This chapel housed some sarcophaguses.

And every single one of them had a dog at the foot of the deceased!

This was the second cloister we saw, and the garden had more usable plants (herbs and fruit trees).

Do you know what this is?

A pear tree!! Isn't it cool? And there were some good sized fruit already on the branches.

One of the themes of the day was bumblebees. They were everywhere, pollinating to their hearts content.

A pretty thistle blossom.

At our third cloister, we decided to stop for a little lunch. Not a bad view from the lunch table, right?

Not a bad lunch, either! Leave it to the Met Museum to provide gourmet sandwiches...

SFS got a hot dog, too, so he was a happy camper!

A quick, post-lunch self portrait.

There were signs all over the place asking you to not touch the art, or the walls, or the plants. But there were a couple potted varieties in the "PLEASE TOUCH" garden, which made SFS very happy!

Back in the museum, we saw an example of the earliest complete deck of playing cards. They were a hunting-themed deck, so instead of suites there are 4 different types of hunting paraphernalia. Isn't that cool? (SBV, thought you'd like that!)

There were also some sacred combs- I'm still unsure of when these were used, but they were very pretty!

Here's another cloister- this one has a glass roof, hence the absence of the garden.

A cool statue.

Here's another pretty chapel.

There were a few doors that lead to the outside, and we wandered around the exterior of the museum. I think that's the George Washington Bridge behind me.

I promise, this is what SFS looked like most of the day... no goofing off whatsoever!

After a fun visit at the museum, it was time to make our way back through the park and to the subway. On the way, you cross a HUGE stone arch. That figure in yellow, waving his arms is SFS.