The Cloisters

Sylvie and I took advantage of our unemployment last Thursday and spent an afternoon at The Cloisters. It was a gorgeous day and the museum is awesome. Don't let the distance from midtown keep you away, it's worth the travel time.

Some of the columns are authentic and some of them are not. They do an excellent job of seamlessly filling in the missing pieces.

It's very cool to be walking through a room full of statues and paintings, turn a corner and be in a recreated chapel like this one.

This courtyard is surrounded by the tables for the museum's cafe.

The fountain was very popular with the birds. I managed to catch this one drinking.

The herbs are divided into sections, this is in the "Magical Plants" section. We were able to restrain ourselves and did not pull any up to see the roots.

Coney Island

On Mom's last day we made the trek out to Coney Island. There wasn't much going on since it was a week day and there isn't much there to begin with, but there were many photos to be taken.

The Boardwalk

Although there were not many people there, the Cyclone was running. It was very, very shaky, but a lot of fun and much faster than I'd expected.

I'm not sure how anyone could do anything besides hang on and try not to get bounced out of the seat.

A fake palm tree on the beach

We were not able to figure out what it was for.

Astroland was not open so we couldn't ride the Wonder Wheel, which was disappointing.

We had the traditional lunch at Nathan's and Mom had the classic hot dog.

New Yankee Stadium

The Mets weren't in town while Mom was here so we had to settle for a Yankees game, which was a chance to check out their new stadium. I never made it to old Yankee Stadium, but I was not particularly impressed with the new one.

I kept thinking about the poor people whose buildings are probably lit up most of the night by the stadium

The Brooklyn Bridge

Mom coming for a visit last week was a perfect opportunity to do some fun touristy things. I'm finally going to be able to cross some things off of my list of Things I Should Do Before I Leave New York. Number 1 on the list is walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, which I finally did on Saturday.

The Manhattan Bridge

The Empire State Building hiding in the clouds

We also went to Chinatown the same day, but I don't have any pictures from it. Since none of us wanted any knock offs of designer handbags we weren't there very long.

CitiField

Clay and I went to a Mets game to see them play the Braves and because we wanted to see the new stadium. We were both very impressed by CitiField and very happy to see the Braves win.

CitiField

I love that you can see the trains go by behind the stadium

Go Braves!