My Jacket Goes to Jesus

Yesterday was our day to go see Corcovado, the mountain crowned with the statue of Christ the Redeemer looking out over the city. It's probably the most famous symbol of Rio and supposedly, Corcovado provides astonishing views.

You couldn't prove it by me, though, because when we went it was like pea soup up there. It was another rainy, cloudy day, and Jesus was positively socked in. As our guide, Roberta, gamely put it in warning us not to be too disappointed: "We've got to do the best we can."

Even standing directly beneath him, we could barely see him. And the view of the city? Forget it. As I told Dave, "It's like Heaven up here -- all bright white with Jesus looming overhead!"

We could get close enough to admire the very Art Deco design of the statue, which was started in 1926 and completed in 1931. Apparently its head and hands were fabricated in France but the rest of it was built here -- I had no idea.

We took some pictures and then went down to sit in the cafe below the statue, where we watched brazen monkeys pilfer food from people's trays. One girl screamed when a monkey leapt up on her table and stole her pastry. We were told not to feed them, but a Brazilian woman next to me fed one apple slices, and that monkey crammed that apple into its face so fast I thought it was going to choke. I guess it was trying to get it all down before its fellow simians showed up. (Never fear -- there's video of all this below.)

I wasn't too upset about the weather. As I told Dave, you take what you get and now it's all part of our story of Corcovado. But I was disappointed that I left my jacket up there -- I put it down to take a photo and then walked away without picking it up again. I didn't realize it until we were halfway down the mountain. Oh well. It's with God now.

Speaking of God, our next stop was Rio's Metropolitan Cathedral, which looks NOTHING like I expected. I thought it would be a traditional edifice that had been around for centuries, but no! It's a vast, modern space inspired by Meso-American  pyramids, with huge modernist panels of stained glass. Very cool, so unexpected and not at all on our radar.

On our descent from Corcovado to the cathedral, we drove through the neighborhood of Santa Teresa, a funky area with beautiful old colonial homes and buildings -- in various states of repair -- and lots of street art. The picture at the top is a detail of a mural in Santa Teresa.

At the cathedral, Dave and I left the tour because it was going on to the Selarón Steps, which we'd seen the day before. We decided instead to set out on our own ambitious journey to see Oscar Niemeyer's fantastic Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói.

We crossed the bay bridge in an Uber driven by a guy named Victor who never took his eyes off his phone the whole time. Somehow we survived.

Oscar Niemeyer is the modernist architect behind Brasília, the "new capital" that Brazil built in the middle of the country back in 1960. Until that time, the capital had been Rio. He also worked on the United Nations headquarters in New York and several notable buildings in São Paulo and elsewhere. The Museum of Contemporary Art, which looks like a UFO or maybe a giant, space-age tulip sitting on the Niterói waterfront, was one of his later works, opening in 1996.

Fortunately it has a little bistro, so Dave and I got lunch here before browsing the art. It's not a big museum. We saw an exhibit of photography celebrating the Guaraní people (a Native American tribe in southern Brazil and Paraguay), an exhibit on Korean lanterns and a show of Brazilian painters known as "coloristas."

Here's one of my favorite "colorista" paintings, by Rafael Avancini. The Portuguese title translates to, "Of the Nights You Didn't Come to Visit Me." Of course the squirrel-like critter made me think immediately of Olga.

(Who is apparently doing fine, by the way. Warren, our friend who is dog-sitting with her, says she has some active days and some quiet ones, which as we told him sounds pretty typical.)

Here's a video featuring some of yesterday's sights (and sounds!).

We took an Uber back across the bay to our hotel and rested up a bit before going to dinner, once again, at the Copacabana Palace. We ate this time in their Cipriani restaurant, which was quite elegant and featured a cocktail pianist entertaining us with "The Girl From Ipanema," "Desafinado" and standards like "Witchcraft." He was a very capable pianist but Dave wanted to urge him to slow down. He seemed like he had a job to do and by golly, he was getting it done.

Today, we're off to Buzios, which fortunately is on the beach and should be quite warm, so hopefully I won't miss my lost jacket!