Casa Museum

This was the entry of a mansion that was owned by a Brazilian Banker. He and his wife had no children so after they died they left their home to the city of Sao Paulo with an endowment to make it into a Homes Museum.

This bench in the mud room was beautiful and wonderfully comfortable. It had three scooped out areas for sitting

I forgot to get a picture of the front of the house but you can get an idea of its size from the back view of the covered patio and the upstairs library

The covered patio looked like an outdoor dance hall or concert room.

The side patio has been transformed into a lovely outdoor dinning area. I imagine that this facility is also used for wedding receptions.

The blue over lapping umbrellas created an amazingly peaceful and cool atmosphere for outdoor dinning

African violets added a charming touch to all the tables. These trees are all over Sao Paulo. The amazing thing is I had one of these trees as a house plant for years and never realized that they grew into such gigantic trees. This is a small one.

An outdoor gallery surrounded the back yard.

It is amazingly peaceful in Sao Paulo once you get inside the walls and gates that surround most of the large homes and condominium skyscrapers in Sao Paulo. You instantly feel like you are in a different place, miles away from the busy streets. The trees and bushes and ground covers buffer the sound of the traffic.

Here we are inside the library upstairs.

The fire place seemed way too small to warm a room of this size but Sao Paulo does not have to deal with the long winters we enjoy in Utah. We usually have only had two or three cool days a week throughout the winter months that we have been here. All you really need is a warm sweater during the day and a nice cozy blanket or two at night.

The library was filled with the original furniture and paintings of the family that owned the home everything was quite opulent

There were cases filled with dishes.

and more dishes. Someone stays busy dusting and keeping all the silver shining and the crystal sparkling.

The bathtub was marble too. I must say that this was a little too much for my taste.

On the main floor of the house the bedrooms have become galleries of typical home furniture from various periods. Dormir (to sleep in Portuguese)
All different types of clothing storage pieces lined the walls on two sides of the room.

The other two walls displayed chairs and furniture meant for sitting. There was an other area that had a photographic and multimedia display of the homes and furnishings of the poor. The contrast was striking.

We parked about five or six blocks from the museum. The sidewalks are maintained by individual home and business owners. You need to look down as you walk to keep from tripping. Some walks are well maintained many are not, the sidewalks very considerably too.

I was quite surprised to see broken dishes used to create this sidewalk outside one of the homes we passed on the way to the car.

Soon we were back in Sao Paulo traffic, but thanks to our GPS we are able to find our way to the MTC no matter how many wrong turns we make. Even though there is a lot of traffic, and very slow going, you rarely ever have people honking their horns at you. The Brazilians are very polite drivers. All you have to do is roll down your window and wave your arm and they will let you merge into a lane.

Restoring a Cathedral

We tried a second time to get a view of Sao Paulo from the top of a skyscraper but the building was closed. We found this charming cathedral unexpectedly as we drove around trying to find parking and decided to visit it instead of waiting two hours for the skyscraper roof top cafe to open.

this is a side view of the cathedral.

the front doors to the cathedral were amazingly beautiful

this view gives you an idea of the arch way and the tile floor

Inside the cathedral there were ladders and scaffuling where replastering and repainting was being done on the walls. There was a car inside the cathedral that was being raffeled off as a means of paying for the restoration.

The stain glass windows were stunning.

I can't resist capturing these wonderful stained glass windows.

their is usually very little light in these old buildings and cathedrals. The light filtering through these painted windows is captivating.

A low wall surrounds the cathedral. There is not much of a buffer between the church and the busy streets of Sao Paulo.

the cathedral was a great find and made for a terrific outing.

Our favorite park

This is our favorite park. We have been here three times now. The director of the area MTC's, Kelly Mills, was just here and after going out to dinner we took him to my favorite spot.

The park is always so peaceful and amazingly quiet even when there are a lot of people here. We almost feel like we are in a cathedral when we are here.

The turtles look like statues sunning themselves on these logs. They move so so slowly (except when they are swimming in the water) that they do look like they are statues. Then they are just extremely slow.

The geese enjoy strolling right along with us.

Every time we come there is some tree or bush in bloom no matter if it is winter, spring, summer or fall.

We always enjoy being together with the Halls and the Woodwards

Just over the fence were families of capivara, ducks and geese all sitting and sunning themselves.

The park is very clean and well maintained. There is no charge to enter the park. I am always surprized that more people do not spend time in the park. On Saturday when we brought Brother Mills here, there were more people than on Fridays when we normally have our P-day. This day there were a lot of monkeys in the trees and groups of children were feeding them.

These long rows of trees resemble long corridors in cathedrals with high vaulted ceilings.

This part of the park is very serine with a statue of patron saint of the forest looking out over a small stream and with huge moss covered bolders.

It is hard to imagine when you are in the park that just a short distance away are very crowded highways with thousands of cars. The retaining walls throughout the park are made of concrete blocks and the pathways are also made of some sort of paving stone.

We met a couple in the park that were willing to take a group picture here on top of this monument. It marks the midpoint between the equador and the South Pole and is known as the Tropic of Capricorn. We gave them a pass-a-long card and shared with them a little bit about the Book of Mormon and the Church.

This is the museum of wood. It must have been an old mansion at one time.

The upper level of the museum is not always open to visitors but this day we were invited to go up stairs. Here we are putting on the slippers designed to help protect the wooden floors.

Vernon's pair were a bit miss-matched
but you can see how beautiful the floor is with these two tones of hard wood.

The guide stayed with us and explained everything in great detail. The President speaks Portuguese and Sister Woodward speaks some but mostly we all rely on Vernon to do the interpretting.

These are close-up shots of the stained glass windows that were the only source of light on this second level.

Butterflies were the motif in the one of the rooms.

Seed pods and leaves of the various specie of trees in Brazil was the inspiration for the stain glass windows in the other room.

This one window had a whole in it.

The defused light coming through these colored glass panels also lends to the peacefulness of this place.

Each one of these wooden panels is made from a different type of wood found in Brazil.

The carving on each panel shows what the leaves look like and the seed pods for this specific type of wood

All of the rooms on the second floor are filled with old furniture that has been made from the various types of wood. I especially liked the different chair designs.

I was tempted to sit in the chairs to see how comfortable they were but there were "please do not sit on the chairs" signs all over the place.

This room is down stairs and has large gross sections of wood to give you a sence of how big the tress are. Then there are trunks behind the table that have been cut revealing the varigation in color that many of the trees have. The bags on top of the cabinet are also made out of wood products. They appeared to be made from large strips of bark or pods that we saw laying on the ground under certain types of trees in the park.
This cabinet holds actual samples of the seeds for each of the different types of wood.

The seeds are as varied and interesting as the samples of the wood.

This shot gives you a feel for the architecture of the building and the beautiful natural lighting throughout the museum.

On this particular day there was a display of children's art from throughout the world. They were all impressions of the Amazon. Following are a few of my favorite.

Tuacons are birds native to Brazil

These children really seemed to be able to capture the richness of the color I see and feel everywhere in Brazil.

The shapes and movement of these childrens art is so delightful.

Many of them captured for me the mood of this wonderful country.

I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.

Just outside the park are small shops and cafes. On Saturday there were street venders that seem to pop up every where. The other day when we went to the zoo. The police came by and told them to move or they would have to take them to jail and confisgate their wares. They all packed up but as soon as the police left, the the venders moved back in.

Here you can see the wall that surrounds the park.

Here we are on are way home. Vernon always schedules beautiful days for our outings.