On our second morning in New York City we let M and J lead the way. We took the subway up to Harlem to eat brunch at Melba’s with J’s friend’s S and N. Most ordered the chicken and waffles. I ordered the omelet as I do at every breakfast restaurant. (I similarly order chile relleno at every Mexican restaurant)
The food was well presented and delicious but can’t touch the breakfast vittles I’ve had at places like More Than Waffles in Encino or Hart’s Coffee in the valley. However, the waffles and chicken that I snagged off of Sam’s plate were very good. I’d never had strawberry butter before, but I think it is a great idea.
After the meal we took the subway further north to Fort Tryon Park at the tip of Manhattan. For the final leg of the Journey to our ultimate destination, The Cloisters, we took the #4 bus. Once at the Cloisters we had an abnormally long wait to buy tickets when we were informed that “my system has crashed” by the woman behind the counter. She called tech support. When tech support arrived he calmly explained to her (trying to keep out of earshot so as not to embarrass her) that she had only minimized the program window and nothing was actually wrong.
S had wanted to reach the Cloisters by 1pm so we could attend the garden tour. We made it, but most of us soon broke away from the tour as it turned out the gardens were neither very big, nor very interesting. Compared to the castles, tapestries and gardens in France this was small potatoes. The building itself was far more interesting ; a real Spanish medieval church transported brick by brick to New York and reassembled.
The church had several Unicorn tapestries on display. The general theme was hunting and killing a unicorn like below.
Then, on one tapestry… things got interesting…
Even in ancient times they had to know that stabbing a horse in the rectum is probably not the best way to kill it. Stranger scenes have been found on even more ancient pieces of art work… trust me.
moving on…
After walking the grounds for a while we broke off from S and N and took the #4 bus back downtown with M and J so we could all go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as admission was included with the Cloisters purchase.
Once at the Met we visited the Roof Garden Cafe (which has an extraordinarily poorly designed queuing system). The rooftop has a treetop view of the southwest portion of Central Park.
We finished up our snacks and resolved to see what we wanted to see with the remaining 90 minutes or so before the museum closed. M and Sam went straight to the Alexander McQueen exhibit (and waited in the line that stretched around the rest of the floor) and I toured all of the European paintings and 19th century art.
Sam and I packed in the pastel portraits exhibit too before meeting all four of our friends (M,J,S and N) outside to catch a taxi to the East Village.
For dinner we ate at luzzo’s, one of J’s favorite pizza places. Unlike the day before, these “New York Style” pizzas were actually great. We were all so famished that we ended up ordering Calamari and three large pizzas
(Arugula and two different meat based pies) before we were through.
Afterwards we walked around J’s old NYU stomping grounds in the East Village.
Eventually N and S had to leave and the remaining four of us headed to J’s apartment on the lower east side for some great rooftop views.
