Poor navigation to the Cloisters

We decided Saturday morning that we should visit the medieval-art museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Cloisters is atop a picturesque hill at the north tip of Manhattan, purpose-built for the architectural treasures it contains.

But we were somewhat delayed... After breakfast we descended into the 96th street subway station, and had the blessing of 2 trains stopping simultaneously, the express #2 on the left and the local #1 on the right. I said, "Hey, let's take the express to 168th!"

We hopped on. The doors always close within 20 seconds or so, and both trains glided noisily north. I glanced at the route board above the window. What a nice thing this is: it shows all the stops on the line; scheduled stops are lit, past and non-stops are unlit. The first thing I noticed was that 168th street was not on the board. Duh. Wrong train. So we got off at 110th street after the train turned east, and went back to 96th and took the #1 as we should have. Isabelle was polite...

The travel advice was to take #1 to 168th street and there to transfer to the A train, which crosses over the #1, take the A train to Fort George Park, then walk 10 minutes to The Cloisters. I was sorely tempted to simply take the #1 up to Dyckman Street, slightly north of The Cloisters, and obviously closer than walking through the park.

But having made one seriously wrong decision already, I decided to take the road more traveled by, and that made all the difference: we actually got to the Cloisters, and found the walk through the park atop the Hudson River bluffs to be spectacularly beautiful. While we bought tickets at the museum, I asked the clerk if it wouldn't be faster simply to take the #1 from Dyckman Street, with no transfers, when we were done. He strongly opposed this, saying blandly, "It's a long walk on a winding path down the hill, and it's several blocks on streets at the bottom -- not very interesting." One presumes that there's a sinister subtext to "not very interesting" such as "your age and clothing and lack of skin pigmentation are not appropriate for the neighborhood."

It was a beautiful walk back through the park to the subway. We were going to Lincoln Cneter, but decided not to transfer at 168th street to the #1, so we took the A train to Columbus Circle and walked 4 blocks back. A good decision: a nice day for a walk, and we arrived at Columbus Circle, 130 blocks south, 45 minutes after thinking about leaving the Cloisters and 29 minutes after stepping into the elevator for the #1 train.

Oh, yes. The Cloisters. Go if you can. It's a marvelous place in and of itself: For tGeorge Park and the Hudson River Valley and then the architectural details and the statuary and ancient stained glass windows and the paintings and carvings and tapestries and ancient goblets.