Out for a walk in Lima

What a week! I'll get to the school performances, but first here are a few pictures from a walk I took last Sunday.

I walked up Av Arequipa on the bike path in the middle of the avenue. On Sunday mornings, according to this sign, no vehicles are allowed, so there are no exhaust fumes. I was walking on Sunday afternoon, so that wasn't the case.

This beauty on Av. Arequipa is for sale.

It's almost midwinter and the temperatures in Lima are a steady 72 degrees fahrenheit (22.2 celsius) most days. The plants love this! Here's a blast of color I walked past, enhanced by the white wall:

And a closeup:
Does anybody else think of Dr Seuss when looking at this tree? What is it?

I'm struck by the mix of architecture in Lima. Small Spanish colonial style houses are right next to, or smushed between, highrise apartment buildings.

I was looking for a particular park, but had forgotten the map so I had a pleasant time wandering around for a couple of hours, looking at houses and gardens. This part of Lima is fairly quiet. By the time I was ready to go back to my apartment, I was far away, so I took a bus back. I'm getting adept at bus travel in the city.

I'll write about the school performances next. Stay tuned!

A little more of Belgium

Darn this short attention span! I had all kinds of good intentions for blog posts about Belgium. Maybe this set of miscellaneous pictures will jog my memory.

This restaurant was in Louvain-la-Neuve when I lived here almost 30 years ago. Sure, you can buy crepes on the street as a sweet snack, but here you can treat yourself to a whole meal of savory filled (and filling) crepes.

Louvain-la-Neuve still has a few older farm buildings, enveloped by new buildings.

This one (above) is about two minutes from Marie's house.

Looks bucolic, doesn't it? The Ferme du Biereau, now a cultural arts center and music venue, is right next to a school, not far from the Cyclotron Research Centre, of interest to all you nuclear physicists reading this blog. I remember going to concerts there--at the farm, not at the cyclotron.

Marie and I walked from her house to pick up her veggie subscription from the CSA (community supported agriculture). We passed sheep--notice the buildings of LLN in the background.

This CSA pickup was in "La Baraque." It's a neighborhood that is an alternative to the sameness of LLN architecture, mentality and lifestyle. Many of the houses/structures are built by the residents, who live cooperatively. Here are a few of the buildings in the neighborhood:

Refreshing to see these interesting houses after the relentless brick of Louvain-la-Neuve.

Centro Cultural Sao Paulo

I was not performing earlier this week, so Pati took me to see where she works, at the Centro Cultural Sao Paulo. This is the tallest part of the building, I think.


This next picture was my first view, from an overpass. The Centro Cultural is the low structure just past the building on the right. It is built into the ground, unlike everything around it. It's modern in that exposed-beam-and-concrete way, but it felt airy and light. 

Here's the roof on one side. The gardeners were working on the other side. It's on the other side that they have periodic saraus in collaboration with the planetarium, with telescopes set up for night sky viewing (in this city of 19 million, it's still possible to see the stars and moon, I can attest). 

There are many places for people to sit. If it hadn't been quite so warm out, I might have made myself comfortable on this bench, or on another like it nearby:


Inside, here is one of the ramps going down to the next level. Lots of clean lines everywhere.

In the middle, there's an garden with a wonderfully jungly feel to it. I love the big tree in this picture. I'll try to get another shot of one somewhere in the city.

All this was quite striking, but even more so was the wide range of activities available. Here is what I did there in a few hours in the middle of a weekday: 

• Toured an exhibit about the Salao de Maio, an artists salon in the 1930s
  
• Sat and watched short documentaries, part of an exhibit on city life in Latin America (I'm hoping I got this right)
  
• Heard a storyteller in the library, as did a group of schoolchildren. There's a circulating collection, a Braille library, a collection of graphic novels and a music library. 
  
• Watched an open dance jam. Every Tuesday dancers come to play together at noon.
  
• Wandered through the bookstore.
  
• Sat in a quiet spot and wrote.
  
• Ate lunch at the cafe, another of those pay-by-the-kilo restaurants that is so prevalent (and good) here. 
  

There is a large materials conservation and restoration lab at the center, a multimedia archive, and archives of ethnographic materials collected from around the country in a massive project begun by Mario Andrade. (In that article, he's called "Brazil's national polymath."  Imagine being called that! At any rate, even sixty years after his death, he still commands great respect.)

There's so much more at the center: dance, theater, arts, music, movies, debates, lectures. Pati said there are around 80 events a month here, so the joint is jumpin'. You'll just have to come see it for yourselves.