Travel with Indigo

Today is Christmas Eve and it’s another beautiful day in BA!  I took a long walk this morning while Phil went out again to look for some local art for the boat.  He came back hours later with four paintings by Manuel Claro Bettinelli, a Brazilian artist who was born in 1920 and died in 2005.  They are very contemporary and abstract-looking and we’ll try to put photos of them on the web site.  I loved every one of them, which is lucky since they are now hanging in various places on the boat.  I think you all will like them too.

Chef Geraldine and I went to Midnight Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral I visited several days ago.  The Mass was held at 10PM, not midnight, and I am told that that is because the locals go to Mass, then go home and eat a big Christmas Eve dinner with their families and then open presents.  I don’t even want to think about what time they finally get to bed!  The Mass was led by the Archbishop and was totally in Spanish, which is obviously appropriate.  Most of the hymns were very familiar to Geraldine and me and when they got to the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed, I actually understood most of it.  I found one of their traditions especially appealing.  At the beginning of the Mass, two of the congregants bring the baby Jesus up to the Archbishop and he puts it on the altar.  Then at the end of the Mass, the Archbishop takes the baby Jesus to the back of the church (near the front door) and puts the baby in His crib.  That is actually the first time He is there and it really represents His birth in a way I had never seen before.  We liked the way the whole congregation followed him to the Nativity scene and then stayed for prayers.  The church was very crowded but they had not added any extra chairs so Geraldine and I stood the whole time.  It was a perfect way to mark Christmas time.