A visit to the Cloisters in Fort Tyron Park in Upper Manhattan will transport you to Medieval Europe.  It has architecture from five different European abbeys that were disassembled, shipped to NYC and then reconstructed in the 1930s.  The gardens and abbeys here will make you feel like you have traveled in time and half way around the world.  But, the A train to 190 street gets you here in under an hour from midtown.