On Friday, classes having been moved out of the way, I visited the Cloisters with a friend. It’s very convenient from campus: it’s the last stop uptown of a bus line. Our IDs got us in for free, which was a good price: I’m not sure how I would have felt about paying the suggested $10 for students (or $20 for “adults,” whose company I thankfully haven’t joined for these purposes). These prices include admission to the main Met, but that’s kind of silly: the Met requires a few weeks of visits.
It was kind of like the Musée Nationale du Moyen Age, which I saw in early 2006, down to the fantastic unicorn tapestries, except much smaller and in a much prettier location. The undeveloped stretch of the Palisades across the Hudson in New Jersey was really nice to see after a month in the city, and the gardens, terraces and gray “cloister” walls were perfect for a sleepy equally-gray morning outside of school.
Thai Market’s $7 lunch special, afterward, was surprisingly good. The som tam (green papaya salad) was not as conflagrant as I’ve grown to expect, but as I’m getting over a cold that was probably a blessing in disguise. The beef with basil was competent. My friend’s pad thai and spring rolls were… well, pretty boring, but there wasn’t anything wrong with them.
Also this week, I took a Brazilian music cruise on the Hudson last Wednesday. It wasn’t my scene (unless, as a professor has suggested, we all become middle-aged after paying tuition deposits), but I got some nice views and had good company. It was a rough few days for others in the area, though: a nearby subway stop was roped off for a couple hours to clean up the blood from a stabbing, and the next day an unfortunate old lady wound up under a van in the middle of an intersection. After a few friends and acquaintances lost their IDs the weekend before, I’ve started trimming down my wallet and key chain to essentials.
“Crèpes on Columbus,” at 107 or 108 and Columbus, was not bad. The savory galletes (I had a complète, and a friend had some fancy creation involving shrimp) came with a very nice salad and were great in their own right, and the sweet crépes were OK. Unfortunately, the prices weren’t so delicious: even with the Euro at $1.39, New York comes out behind about threefold.
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