1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (37 page)

Visitors today get much the same experience they did when the museum opened in 1938, touring galleries laid out in a logical flow from the Romanesque period (A.D. 1000–1150) through the Gothic (A.D. 1150–1520), most radiating out from the Cuxa Cloister, with its original 12th-century elements from the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa in the northeast Pyrenees. All told, the Cloisters is home to some 5,000 items, many from Barnard’s original collection, some donated by Rockefeller (including the seven Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries that have become a symbol of the museum), and others acquired in the intervening decades—illuminated manuscripts, stained-glass windows, reliquary shrines, elaborate crucifixes and gold chalices, and sculptures depicting Christian saints.

Continue the sensation of disconnect by traveling another 3 miles north to the residential Riverdale section of the Bronx. This is where you’ll find Wave Hill, a bucolic 28-acre cliffside garden and cultural center offering gorgeous views of the Hudson River and Rockefeller’s Palisades cliffs. Originally a private estate, the property at one time or another was leased to the family of the young Theodore Roosevelt, to conductor Arturo Toscanini, and to Mark Twain, who wrote of its winter winds: “They sing their hoarse song through the big tree-tops with a splendid energy that thrills me and stirs me and uplifts me and makes me want to live always.” Deeded to the city in 1961, Wave Hill continues to be a special oasis dedicated to fostering connection between people and nature. On weekday mornings and afternoons its pastoral gardens, greenhouses, and woodlands provide the setting for serene contemplation, while weekends offer concerts, lectures, exhibitions, and workshops.

T
HE
C
LOISTERS:
Fort Tyron Park near 190th St. Tel 212-923-3700;
www.metmuseum.org
.
When:
closed Mon.
W
AVE
H
ILL:
West 249th St. and Independence Ave., the Bronx. Tel 718-549-3200;
www.wavehill.org
.
When:
closed Mon.
B
EST TIMES
: spring and fall for the Cloisters’ free garden tours; May–June for peak gardens and late Oct for foliage at Wave Hill; Dec for medieval concerts at the Cloisters.

The Cloisters are dedicated to the art and architecture of medieval Europe.

A Playground for Millionaires

New York, New York

For all its centrality as the gateway to the beautiful Upper West Side, one of the city’s finest residential neighborhoods, Columbus Circle was, until recently, a total mess, dominated by the nearly Stalinesque New York
Coliseum convention center, the empty hull of the defunct Huntington Hartford Gallery (a nearly windowless white marble slab directly facing a great view of Central Park), and a skinny 44-story office tower, creaking like a ship in high winds and making workers on high floors queasy.

What a difference a decade makes. Today the Coliseum has been replaced by the dazzling 55-story Time Warner Center, the swaying tower has been shored up and transformed into Donald Trump’s Trump International Hotel & Tower, and the Hartford Gallery is getting a major makeover on its way to becoming the Museum of Arts & Design’s new home, due to open in 2008. In the center of things, standing atop a 70-foot granite column and surrounded by newly landscaped fountains, stands a statue of Christopher Columbus erected in 1892 to mark the 400th anniversary of his voyage.

The Time Warner Center is the real star here, the lodestone that’s transformed this onetime pass-through block into a serious center of white-glove living, indulgent dining, and high-culture entertainment. Built on a design by David Childs and Mustafa Kemal Abadan, the building takes the form of two parallelogram-shaped glass-and-steel towers rising from a common base whose facade follows the curve of Columbus Circle. Inside, it’s a veritable city unto itself. At street level and just above are nearly 50 upscale shops; a little higher up is the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center (see p. 178), with artistic director Wynton Marsalis at the helm.

A view of Columbus Circle and Central Park from the Time Warner Center’s 150-foot-tall glass curtain wall.

Upstairs, levels 3 and 4 offer half a dozen extraordinary restaurants and cafés. The 26-seat Masa gets the award for conspicuous consumption, its
omakase
dinner—five artfully composed appetizers followed by a sushi entrée of 15 to 20 exotic seafoods flown in from Japan—going for a cool $350 minimum. Designed with a Zenlike sense of order and calm, the restaurant offers seating at small tables or at a Japanese cedar bar, where you can watch sushi god Masa Takayama work his pricey magic. Next door, the less templelike Bar Masa brings costs back down to earth. At Per Se, Thomas Keller of Napa’s French Laundry (see p. 863) has created a Gotham version of his vaunted flagship, with elegant contemporary decor and views over Central Park setting the stage for nine-course tasting menus. Most fun of the center’s restaurants is probably Café Gray, a bustling room with panoramic views just past the open kitchen, serving a menu by chef Gray Kunz that marries French techniques with flavors and occasional ingredients from Southeast Asia.

The upper levels of the Time Warner Center are given over to offices, millionaires’ condominiums, and the uber-luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hotel; its 251 rooms occupy floors 35 to 54 of the center’s north tower. Feeling like a city in the clouds above the real city below, the hotel offers views of either the park, the Hudson River, or Midtown from every room, and is designed with a seamless blend of urban contemporary, Asian, and updated 1940s style—totally sophisticated, totally chic, and totally expensive. On the 35th floor, the hotel’s exquisite 14,500-square-foot spa is a tranquil aerie whose indulgent menu of massages and various body treatments adapted from traditions around the world knows few rivals.

Across Columbus Circle, in the Trump building, Jean Georges restaurant is the brainchild of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, one of America’s most creative culinary forces, and is among the city’s finest restaurants. From the simplest dish to the most complex, each masterpiece is a combination of obscure flavors, innovative pairings, and dazzling presentations of the kind that have captivated Vongerichten’s devotees since he first debuted on the New York dining scene in 1991. Nearby, on Central Park South, San Domenico is one of the most elegant, refined Italian restaurants in New York.

W
HERE:
intersection of Broadway and Central Park South (W. 59th St.);
www.shopsatcolumbuscircle.com
.
M
ASA
: Tel 212-823-9800;
www.masanyc.com
.
Cost:
prix fixe dinner from $350; tasting menu at Bar Masa $68.
P
ER
S
E
: Tel 212-823-9335;
www.perseny.com
.
Cost:
dinner tasting menus $250.
C
AFÉ
G
RAY
: Tel 212-823-6338;
www.cafegray.com
.
Cost:
dinner $75.
M
ANDARIN
O
RIENTAL
H
OTEL
: Tel 866-801-8880 or 212-805-8800;
www.mandarinoriental.com
.
Cost:
from $745.
J
EAN
G
EORGES
: Tel 212-299-3900;
www.jean-georges.com
.
Cost:
prix fixe dinner from $95.
S
AN
D
OMENICO:
Tel 212-265-5959; sandomeniconewyork.com.
Cost:
dinner $75.

Coming to America

New York, New York

The Golden Age of the passenger liners ended when jets cut the transatlantic travel time from five days to just a few hours, but what travelers gained in convenience, they lost in pure élan: long, leisurely
days at sea; white-glove service; elegant formal dinners; a real sense of onboard community; and the feeling of being truly away from it all, with thousands of miles between you and landfall.

Since the early 1970s, when point-to-point liners morphed into round-trip cruise ships, the great Cunard Line has been the only shipping company to continue offering regularly scheduled transatlantic service in season, transiting between home ports in New York and Southampton, England. And who better? Cunard, after all, was the line that started it all back in 1840, when Sir Samuel Cunard secured the first royal contract to carry mail by steamship between Britain and North America. A sequence of legendary vessels followed:
Mauritania, Lusitania, Aquitania, Berengaria, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth,
and finally, in 1969,
Queen Elizabeth 2,
the ship that kept up the transatlantic tradition for over three decades. Everyone assumed she was the last of the true ocean liners … but they were wrong.

In 1998, under the new ownership of American shipping giant Carnival Corporation, Cunard announced its intention to build a new liner, the largest ever conceived, and to create “a new Golden Age of sea travel for those who missed the first.” Nearly six years and more than $800 million later, in 2004, that dream became a reality when Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II christened the 2,620-passenger
Queen Mary 2,
a vessel built to sail the roughest of the North Atlantic’s waters well into the 21st century. She’s big, fast, and tough, with a knife-shaped prow, uncommonly thick hull plating, and incredibly powerful engines. Inside, she’s a veritable love letter to the old ocean liner days, merging art deco themes with modern, safety-conscious materials. Standout rooms include the formal Queen’s Room ballroom with its classic grandeur; the high-ceilinged Chart Room with its green glass deco maps and 1940s-style furnishings; and the forward-facing Commodore Club, its handsome leather chairs looking out over dramatic bow views.

At meals, Cunard is the last passenger line still segregating guests by class. Those booking the top-level suites dine in the 206-seat Queen’s Grill, while junior-suite passengers dine in the 180-seat Princess Grill and everyone else dines in the 1,351-passenger Britannia Restaurant. The two grills are the model of restrained good taste, while the Britannia is a dramatic, three-deck space designed to recall the magnificent first-class restaurant on the original
Queen Mary
(now permanently docked in California, see p. 817).
QM2
continues some other traditions long gone by the wayside on other vessels (such as offering onboard kennels for passengers’ dogs and cats), but her archetypal nod to tradition is her singular schedule of transatlantic crossings, offered April through November. The trip westbound, from Southampton to New York, offers an entrance to New York that is unrivaled, clearing the Verrazano Narrows Bridge by just 13 feet at the highest tide and entering New York Harbor with the Statue of Liberty and the downtown skyline up ahead. It’s a sight to behold.

Be sure to listen for the two 7-foot Tyfon steam whistles mounted way up on the classic black-and-red funnel. Their sound is evocative enough—a low bass “A” that literally shakes the rafters—but here’s the bit of history that makes them sublime: One was borrowed permanently from the original
Queen Mary
. It’s the same whistle that sounded when the ship entered New York Harbor in 1945, carrying 14,526 American servicemen home from WWII, celebrating victory. Welcome to New York.

C
UNARD:
Tel 800-7-CUNARD or 661-753-1000;
www.cunard.com
.
Cost:
transatlantic crossings from about $1,400 per person (double occupancy).
W
HEN:
Apr–Nov.
B
EST TIMES
: roughest seas are typically Apr and Nov. The most beautiful weather in New York is usually in May–June and Sept–Oct.