New York City, part 5: Uptown Manhattan

[Part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here]

Just up the road from my cousin's place in uptown Manhattan is the George Washington Bridge, connecting Manhattan to New Jersey over the Hudson river. It's a two-deck suspension bridge, and it's the highest capacity bridge on the planet in terms of the amount of traffic it moves every year. More awesome: the bridge is also namesake of a character in the Marvel Comics Universe :)

The Little Red Lighthouse lives under the George Washington Bridge and is the subject of a children's book.

Turns out that New York City is riddled with fallout shelters. These shelters were nominated areas for people to gather in safety after a blast, and were selected by the government during the Cold War as part of the Community Fallout Shelter program. I'm not sure if the shelters themselves are still stocked and functional, but many of the signs still remain.

The Cloisters function as a museum located in Fort Tyron Park, uptown Manhattan. The museum was built in the forties as a branch of the Metropolitan museum and is a home to many thousands of pieces of medieval art.

The building itself is constructed from the remains of monasteries and cathedrals from that period in Europe, the name itself describing the many covered, partially open walkways that medieval monks would spend time in, playing corridor cricket, beer pong or simply in quiet meditation.