The Day in Review

Once we got our feet under us, we wandered around a bit.  My friend Teri and I went to the Hippie Market and the TV Tower.  The TV Tower is exactly what it says on the tin, a giant aerial that has an observation deck on it from which stunning views of the city are possible.   We took lots of pictures, including shots of the currently-under-construction World Cup soccer stadium which is within stone's throwing distance of where we are just now. With the warm sunny day, the tower was quite the place to be. We looked over this incredibly well-thought-out city we're in for a long time, and then we went down to see what could be had in the Hippie Market that sprawled at the base.

The Hippie Market wasn't at all what I was expecting.  It was a thousand times more organized.  Everything in the world was in it, though.  From gemstone items to rasta wear, somebody was making it or selling it.  There were really big furniture, some awesome recycled things like chairs made from old tractor tires and purses from coke can tabs, and even owls crafted from various cones and seed pods.  (No.  No owls are coming home with me; I couldn't figure out how to get them back safely!)

I wound up buying a ring.  I had left everything but my Claddagh at home, and I have been twisting my empty fingers looking for them.  I decided to get something that would be both souvenir and take care of that issue.  I found a gentleman who had lovely rings of many semiprecious stones, and I found a piece of amethyst large enough to knock somebody out with.  We talked to each other in a mixture of languages and settled a price and he even sized it for my index finger while I waited.  I haven't had that much fun since I was in Costa Rica.

After eating a largish lunch, we all piled on our little green tour bus and headed out on the town to see monuments, churches, an other sites of interest.  The first place we stopped was the Santuario Dom Bosco.  Only once or twice in my whole life have I been somewhere as beautiful.  The whole building was stained glass panels, basically.  It was like stepping into a living cube of blue light.  You always hear about something being "breathtaking," but this place actually was.  I could have sat for hours just watching the way the sun played with it.  It was exquisite from every conceivable angle.  The camera-happy among us just ran around like we were punch-drunk, clicking away trying to get all the glory we were seeing with our eyes preserved.

It didn't stop there.  Everything we saw, while not as knock-you-down magnificent as Santuario Dom Bosco, was elegant of line, satisfying to the vision.  It is modern but not in a way that gets in the way of its loveliness.  This fits in with the tone of the city as a whole.

The city (although not the Santuario) is mostly the work of one architect, apparently, something that completely befuddles me.  The architect of almost everything in Brasilia is Oscar Niemeyer who is, I think, 90 something and still going at it.  His design sense is incredibly pleasing to me.

We saw the famous Catedral Municipal of Brasilia today, too, designed to look like a Crown of Thorns, a Cup, and the Host.  The inside was even more amazing than the exterior, if that were possible.  It was another confection of impossible spans of stained glass and sculpture.  I could have sat in it forever.

Everywhere we went today, whether it was looking at the Superblocs of housing or just driving down the streets, we were surrounded by Niemeyer's dream for Brasilia.  It is lovely.  Even though I am exhausted, it has been a fantastic trip through this city.