The Cloisters, Washington Heights, New York City, Part 2

This continues our visit to the glorious Cloisters museum in Upper Manhattan. Read Part 1 here. The museum, owned and maintained by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is simply beautiful. The artifacts are breath-taking, but my favorite part was the building itself and the park surrounding the area. Fort Tryon Park is one of the [...]

The Cloisters, Washington Heights, New York City, Part 1

What can I say. It’s exquisite. It’s been a long-time goal to see this fabulous museum. As a student of medieval history and art, visiting this museum — one of North America’s most extensive collection of medieval art and manuscripts — was one of my big travel goals. The Cloisters is an extension of the [...]

Alexander Hamilton National Historic Site, NYC: Part 2

In my previous post about Hamilton’s Grange, I described the turbulent history of the house and its two relocations. This post is about our wonderful visit through the house. We’ve been wanting to see Hamilton’s home for many, many years so this visit was our dream come true. You enter the door from the right [...]

Alexander Hamilton National Historic Site, NYC: Part 1

Alexander Hamilton built and owned only one home in his life, The Grange, or his “sweet project,” he called it in his letters. He’d had a tempestuous, tragic life as a young man and was now ready to settle down into comfortable family life in the countryside of Upper Manhattan Island, Harlem Heights. While he [...]

The Best NYC iPhone Apps

Since I’ll be visiting the Big Apple again this year, I’ve been scouring the web for iPhone apps that will help me. I am particularly interested in apps that list restaurants, have transit maps, contain transit map schedules, and list free attractions in the city. Oh, have I hit the jackpot this week. Here are [...]

Fraunces Tavern Museum, Pearl Street, New York, NY

As history buffs who greatly admire and study the lives and works of the fathers of our nation, we couldn’t visit New York City without a pilgrimage to Fraunces Tavern Museum on Pearl Street. The diminutive building is overshadowed by rising skyscrapers of modern times, testaments to the success of the nation as a bastion [...]

Trinity Church, New York, NY, Part 3

Trinity Church is beautiful, inside and out. Visiting this historic building was one of our highlights to visiting Manhattan. (Read Part 1 and Part 2). After resting beneath a canopy of trees that served as a cool refuge from the hot New York streets and lingering in the sanctuary in the same pews that our [...]

America’s Rhine: The Hudson River

You’d never guess it walking along the West Side in Manhattan, but the cloudy, brackish waters of New York City’s famous Hudson River begins in the clear mountainous forests of the Adirondacks some 300 miles north.   These photos were taken near Newcomb, New York. The Hudson River starts about 10 miles north from this [...]

Burr, Hamilton, Chase Bank and the Wooden Water Pipes

What do wooden water pipes buried beneath Manhattan and the formation of a bank have to do with the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr? Truth is stranger than fiction…

Trinity Church, New York, NY: Part 2

This is the second installment of our tour through Trinity Church on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. See Part 1 here. It’s an experience of extremes. The streets are hot and smelly and loud, filled with honking horns and diesel traffic and the deafening noises of subway trains moving below our feet, of millions of [...]

Next Page »