NYC

The trip to New York was marvelous. I was primarily there to see my best friend and her family, so we did the traditional touristy things like.... taking a carload of stuff to the thrift store, and staying at home to bake a birthday cake. Okay, those are not so uniquely NYC, but when visiting such a massive city you don't ever forget where you are - even in downtown DC I never have to navigate so many people on the sidewalk. It really makes me thing carefully about what life will be like in Madrid, and how a suburb might be a better fit for me, so that I can be exposed to slightly more greenery and slightly less pavement.

My friend J is an art teacher, and their current unit is graffiti. I love that the students are learning about art form they see daily. J took us on a graffiti tour, teaching us about some of the different types and some of the informal rules. For example, it's not okay within the street art community to graffiti cemeteries.

   Nu Yolk! Yes, I smiled the first time I saw this, even though it's on the level of a Dad joke.

I played tourist on my final day, when the rest of them were back at work and school. I finally had a chance to visit the Cloisters, a branch of the New York Metropolitan Art Museum. It is an excellent collection of medieval art, in a building purpose-built for this kind of art. It was marvelous, but I wouldn't take just anyone there. You need to really, really like medieval art to want to spend the whole afternoon looking at it. 

When I had an hours to kill, I used Google Maps to see what was nearby and found the Little Red Lighthouse. This is not one of those clever perspective photographs - the George Washington Bridge is just that massive. There was a children's book about it, followed by a campaign to save the lighthouse in the 1940's, and now it just sits tucked under the bridge.