A tomb of our own

A dear friend and reader of this blog, Deepsnaps, visited me over the weekend. Naturally, with an out of town guest in my midst, I had a perfect excuse to do all the New York tourist things that I pretty much do anyway, but sometimes forget about. And what's the one tourist spot you think of when you think of New York City? Thaat's right--Grant's Tomb! Located in far upper Manhattan in Riverside Park, Grant's Tomb is, according to the free guidebook I picked up at BEA, the largest tomb in North America. And to think I'd never been there! Which frankly is rather surprising considering I spent the first month I lived in New York being unemployed and doing basically every free tourist thing there is.

But what were my impressions of the final resting place of our 18th president (and his lovely wife Julia, who affectionately called him "Ulys")? Well really, I think the beauty of Grant's Tomb speaks for itself:

Have you ever seen a more beautiful tomb? Or a larger one? Certainly, not in North America you haven't! Also, I don't know if Deepsnaps would be cool with me publishing photos of her here for all the Internet (you are reading, people-outside-my-immediate-family, aren't you?) to appropriate for their possibly unsavory purposes, so I won't tell you if that's her or not.

The guide book also informed us that in addition to having a nice collection of Civil War memorbilia, Grant's Tomb is the weekend meeting spot of the New York unicycle society. Luckily, we were aware of this in advance.


Grant's Tomb is also home to some of the nicest mosaic art benches I've seen in I don't know how long. Here I was trying for a pose putting my arm around each of these nude gods/goddesses with a lasivious expression. Unfortunately, I realized only later that it looks more like I'm clotheslining them.

Thanks for visiting, Deepsnaps!