In our East Coast road trip, we visited the picturesque hamlet of Franklin, MA. That is to say, we visited my brother, his wife, and the niece and nephew. It was a fun time at their house for a long weekend; it’s is easy to forget how much time gets sucked out of the day by little kids and how much fun it is to play with them.

We also visited Providence College where my brother works. Sorry, no pictures; just imagine generic East Coast liberal arts college and you are not too far off. We also took the train into Boston because the kids had never been either on the train or in the city. It was fun wandering around as it always is when you are trying to get your bearings in a new city.

On the train ride home, I taught my niece three card monty and I only cheated a couple of times. I think that makes some good points on my unsuitable uncle card.

I did a sketch of the yard landscape. They have daffodils, birch trees, oak trees, and blueberries amongst other plants.

Out. Out. Out. Out.

We did some watercolors. It is a couple of horses that Jasmine drew and then had help coloring. I was hit when I said that I always knew she liked painted horses. Jasmine says Hadley also drew a horse.

I did a landscape watercolor. Not too horrible for freehand without a sketch.

And Boston. I just thought a museum on a ship dedicated specifically to the Boston Tea Party needed a special picture because nothing says Go America like dressing up as Indians and then looting and tipping over shipping containers.

On the second day of our trip to New York City, we walked up north from Harlem to the Cloisters. I don’t think that a lot of tourists make it out of downtown Manhattan, but there is really much more to New York City than that. First, we stopped for a bagel at 168th and Broadway, which was delicious. Nowhere does bagels like NYC does bagels – other than perhaps North Jersey which, frankly, is a suburb of NYC. The secret is boiling the dough then baking the bagel.

After that, we walked down to Ft Washington and saw a little red lighthouse that has been sitting at the hook on the Hudson for a hundred years. It is slightly dwarfed by the Washington Bridge overhead.

George Washington Bridge from below. We had to do a bit of urban exploration to get this view.

Afterwards, we made it to the Cloisters, which is a museum dedicated to medieval art and architecture and made up of parts out of buildings brought over from Europe. There was awesome stained glass all over the place, some really cool tapestries, and a bunch of mediocre religious sculptures. The focus was also on gardens with medieval plants that were just about to come in bloom. I think that if you have half a day in NYC you should consider taking the A uptown and enjoying a different part of the city.

The interior courtyard gardens were very pretty in the Cloisters.

And this is the coolest looking pear tree ever.

Some sweet illustrated manuscripts. I wish books still came with art like this.

Very well made stained glass; I’ll have to improve mine to approach this quality.

Some pretty painting on stained glass; one more thing that would be fun to learn, but there is probably not that much time in life.

And the obligatory picture of one of the Unicorn tapestries. They are large but incredibly detailed when you get up close.

While visiting Jasmine’s brother in New York City, we took a day and went to the Met. When I say all day, we were at the opening at 10 am and they kicked us out at 5:30 pm. Other than a half hour bagel lunch break, we were hiking around all day looking at art. The Met is huge!! We were tired by the end and we only saw about 70% of the museum.

We liked the 19th century European painters, the Egyptian Wing, and the Greek and Roman wing the best. Also, the Near East wing was awesome and I think I learned more there than I have at any other museum.

The only thing we were disappointed by was the Arms and Armor wing which was really only super decorative armor from the Middle Ages which did not appeal to us.

Below are a selection of the random art we liked the best; obviously, we can’t show all of the things we liked, so we just chose some of the art at random.

I really like the Roman sculptures. Something about their realism is just entrancing.

An Egyptian ivory child’s toy in the shape of a dog. Its mouth moves by a handle. At roughly 3500 years old, I still want to make a copy (in wood) for my nephew.

A piece from Monet. I think that Impressionism is my favorite painting style. Jasmine may disagree.

Part of the Ishtar Gate from Babylon. A really cool glazed brick sculpture, I want this at my house – or something similar.  Now to figure out how to glaze bricks.

A cylinder seal. Apparently they used to make cylinders of carved stones or gems and roll them out to create a line of script. A cool Idea that I want to replicate with 3D printing.