Tag: travel

Postcard from Guanajuato, Mexico: Festival of the Virgin of Loreto

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Dancers pranced to beats of drums and high-pitched flutes all day yesterday in a street below the house where we are staying. We’re not sure it is an official holy day, but the neighborhood participants treat it as such.

Flowers adorned the altar in the Capilla Santa Casa de Loreto, dedicated to the Annunciation in the home the Virgin inhabited when the angel Gabriel revealed her impending delivery of El Nino. While Candelaria in January is regarded as the holy day when the faithful bring their small Nino statues dressed in new finery to churches for blessing, in Guanajuato the ceremony is replicated in front of the altar during this festive event marking the anniversary of the consecration of the chapel in 1854. Although some let me peek inside their baskets, we didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone for permission to photograph the lacily attired Ninos they cradled so proudly.

And, of course, music, food and firecrackers warmed up the crowd in advance of the major pyrotechnical displays at 9 o’clock. The experts toiled to assemble a monumental castillo of fireworks throughout the afternoon.

We were viewing the altar when the shrill sounds of the whirling wheels of light first began. Along with many of those heeding the call to exit the church, we watched from the steps. The Mister began filming with the camera.

First lesson learned: Do not hold the camera vertically when shooting because we do not have the software downloaded to rotate it 90 degrees. For this reason, the images of the fireworks were snatched from frames of the video and turned for viewing.

Second lesson: When a lone bombero appears beside you in fireproof clothing, lowers his visor and nervously glances upward, MOVE. Even if relocating means you must stop filming just as the swirling halo of the announcing angel perched atop the castillo rockets upward into the dark night sky.

Cascades of sparkling fireworks showered down upon us from the rooftop of Capilla Santa de Loreto. This display was followed by the finale of explosions of light set off above. The video captures some of the first sparkling showers.

Postcard from Guanajuato, Mexico: An art-nouveau flavored barrio

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Although the city of Guanajuato is the capital of the state of Guanajuato, the seat of the state government is not downtown. Governance is conducted in a neighborhood southeast of the center of the city near La Presa de la Olla. The original dam, or presa, dates from 1749.

But what captured our interest in the neighborhood was the architecture, much of it with art nouveau details in contrast to the ancient colonial buildings in the historic center. Presumably, this is where the social elite during the rule of Porfirio Diaz chose to erect modern homes reflecting their wealth enhanced by the dictator’s long rule.


Note added later in the day: This headline was changed as a more knowledgeable reader politely nudged me that these images reflected art nouveau styles, not art deco.

Postcard from Bologna, Italy: Reflecting on fine “finestre”

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Wandering under the miles of sheltering porticos lining the streets of Bologna, it is easy to miss the wonderful attention paid to the architectural details a floor above. Bolognese architecture does not treat windows as merely functional holes in the wall filled with glass, but as sculptural artistic expressions.

And, yes, that is the Mister who slipped into Edward Hopper’s plain-old-American-style-windowed “Second Story Sunlight” at a major retrospective of the artist’s works at Palazzo Fava while we were in Bologna. The contrast between the architecture surrounding us in Italy and the slices of Americana portrayed by Hopper made us cast our eyes upward with even more appreciation.