Fantasy islands

Lifestyle/Technology | A time-traveling trip in Manhattan shows the stuff of which dreams are made | Susan Olasky

James Allen Walker for WORLD

For two dollars and a little time you can hop on the M4 bus in Manhattan, traverse a spectrum of wealth and poverty, travel back in time to the Middle Ages, and see a temple of 21st-century technology.

I picked up the bus on the corner of 83rd and Madison Avenue, a block away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My destination: The Cloisters, a branch of the museum dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages.

The bus isn't for those in a hurry. Depending on the traffic, the trip takes 45-90 minutes, but it's an illuminating journey: affluent Upper East Side, northern edge of Central Park, middle-class Morningside Heights, largely impoverished Washington Heights, and so forth, before finally reaching The Cloisters and the city's highest point (elevation 265 feet above sea level).