PORTUGAL: SLEEPING IN FATIMA AND A TRIP TO ESTREMOZ

  July 1-2, 2022

After a long day of sightseeing, we were ready to dump our stuff at our hotel, grab a bite to eat, and go to bed. The only problem was that we couldn't find our hotel, the SDivine Fatima Hotel. Our GPS placed in in the center of a roundabout. We had to call the hotel twice for directions. We finally found it just off the roundabout on one of the many exits, but set back from the road with no visible signage.

We were still in the city of Fátima, and it was fun to see this azulejo depiction of the Visitation of Our Lady of the Rosary to the three shepherd children.

After unloading our luggage, we set out on foot to find something to eat. The only thing we found open was a butcher shop that made sandwiches and "toasts," or grilled sandwiches (kind of like paninis). The guy behind the counter spoke as much English as I spoke Portuguese, so we had a pretty funny pantomime exchange. He gave us some meat and cheese samples to try, and we pointed at what we wanted. When Bob asked for mayonnaise for his sandwich, the butcher was horrififed, basically refusing. The sandwiches were good, at least my toastsed one with melted cheese oozing out the sides was!

We also shared some very good sausage and olives.

The next day we got off to an early start because we planned to cover a significant distance.

SOUTHERN TEXAS, BEAUMONT: THE ART MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN TEXAS

 November 22, 2021

In my last post, I mentioned what a surprise it was to discover a church as beautiful as St. Anthony's Cathedral Basilica in an industrial town like Beaumont, Texas. Some of the primary businesses associated with the town are Bethlehem Steel, Gulf Oil, and Exxon Oil. Driving around, we definitely got the feel that it was a blue-collar town, stereotypically not a place known for things like art museums.

So as we pulled up to the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, I must confess that my expectations were not very high, in spite of the fact that we'd just been blown away by St. Anthony's. The exterior is nice but not exceptional. A statue of a rakish George O'Brien Millard, a prominent Beaumont citizen in the early 1900s who helped develop the city's public school system, stands on the corner.

We stopped at the front desk to pay our $8 admission fees and I was almost immediately hooked. This was going to be Beaumont Shocker #2. Right next to the desk was an elaborate Tree of Life sculpture that rivals just about any similarly-themed sculpture I've seen.

Tree of Life, Creation (1960-1980) by Alfonso Soteno

A close-up view of the top shows God the Creator overseeing his creations, including Adam and Eve in the Garden with the serpent between them.

At the bottom of the tree are Adam and Eve again as they are being expelled from the Garden.

NEW MEXICO, DAY 5: SANTA FE'S MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART

 June 29, 2021

I had no idea what Santa Fe's Museum of International Folk Art was. I had never heard of it when Bob added it to our itinerary. He knows I love folk art and art museums in general, and so the name attracted his attention.

It was raining when we got to the museum complex known as "Museum Hill." Four museums are on the site: the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, and the Museum of International Folk Art. In addition, there is also the Botanical Garden at Museum Hill. So much to see and so little time! 

You could easily spend two days on this hill, but we only had one afternoon, so we made our way to the Folk Art Museum.

At first, it seemed like a normal art museum. We paid our entrance fee and started down a hallway, passing

Triple Eyes (2007) by Alexander H. Girard

When we entered the main exhibit room, however, we discovered an art museum unlike any other we have visited. It was a very large room, warehouse sized, absolutely crammed with dioramas of scenes from various cultures along with dolls, masks, religious folk art, costumes, toys, and so on. More than 100 countries are represented. It is an eye-popping collection. In fact, the Folk Art Museum houses the largest collection of folk art in the world.  There are more than 135,000 artifacts, about 10% of which are on display at any given time. I could have spent the entire day in this huge room with its warren of displays. Bob, on the other hand, was a bit overwhelmed. It's more my thing than his.

Here is a sampling of a few of my favorites. It may seem like a lot of photos, but it is a small fraction of what I saw. I am not going to try to group them together by type because that is not how I experienced the museum.