After we had worn out our welcome at The Crystal Palace, and Jean had bought a souvenir demitasse set for her boss’ sister-in-law, Marcelo suggested we go look at Alberto Santos-Dumont’s little house.
WHO?
Alberto Santos-Dumont, the father of aviation, that’s who.

“Whoa now, what about the Wright brothers?” you protest.

Well, I’m sorry to tell you, there are a bunch of historians and how-ever-many-billion Brazilians that will tell you differently. According to studies, the Wrights never documented the Kitty Hawk thing properly when asked to. Dumont has witnesses that saw his little box plane, called the 14bis, launch, fly and land, all unaided. The skeptics say that the Wrights didn’t launch unaided.

Whatever. Marcelo let us off to walk up the tiny narrow stairs to the little house. Smashed against the wall was a vendor selling souvenirs and postcards. Robo told me how he always wanted to take a trip and only snap closeup pictures of the postcards instead of buying them, then passing the pictures off as his own. It sounded good to me.

There was a slight glare on the plastic, but it’s a valid idea, I’ll have to say. The guy running the booth looked at me like I was an idiot cheapskate, so I hit him with an “obrigado” and tried to zoom up the little steps after Robo, but tripped on one of the uneven and unusually tall risers on the way up.

Dumont’s hideaway was indeed tiny, and looked like a dollhouse. He was extremely superstitious, and thought that each journey should start on the right foot. Therefore, the stairs in his house were all half-runged, and started with the right half. I can see OSHA’s reaction to something like this.

His house was nothing more than one room with a loft. There was no kitchen, because he always ordered from the hotel across the street (which is now the Catholic University of Petrópolis). His bed doubled as his storage, and it was painfully short–about 5 feet 3 inches. Dumont was a short man. There was a tiny little bathroom with hot water rigged up in there somehow, and a giant jug above the toilet for ease of flushing.

The house looks like something in Disney World, doesn’t it? Robo is walking into the loft from the upper yard, which was beautifully landscaped to further hide and beautify the house.

Fun! Interesting! What’s next?

The navigation of the narrow stairs back to Marcelo’s car. We were either going to the museum or the cathedral, depending on which was open first. I got a nice shot of the Catholic University, former hotel and food dispensary for Alberto Santos-Dumont.

The cathedral wasn’t open yet, and we weren’t ready for lunch, so Marcelo suggested we go to the  Imperial Museum, which was the former summer home of Dom Pedro II. He pointed out the group of horse-drawn carriages parked in front and said, “I was the driver for Amazing Race Brazil a few years ago.”

“What?” Jean and I exclaimed.

“You know the show?” Marcelo asked, eyebrows almost to the ceiling.

“We LOVE that show!” we said in unison. “You got to be involved?”

“Yes. The people had to get in the carriages and do something. I drove the camera people  and the producers here. It was very interesting and fun.”

“How totally cool!” I said, like I was talking to Phil Keoghan himself.

We pulled into the gate for Marcelo to let us out into the light rain.

“Are you coming?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “You will enjoy it. Ees very good.”

I had finally figured out that Marcelo had probably seen the sights enough to suit him, and why pay the admission fee to see them again?

The Palace was a beautiful Bermuda pink color with white accents. It was big and impressive, but not any larger than some regular old private mansions. It was, after all, just a summer home. Beyond the big wrought iron gate was a lush garden filled with myriad varieties of exotic plants cultivated by DPII himself. Marcelo said the whole family were avid gardeners. The green space provided a stunning view from the front, and privacy from the curious citizens that may want a peek.

Here’s a nice shot of the Palace I found on Wiki.

It had started to rain as we walked up the long driveway to the house. Tender hothouse flower Robo covered up immediately with Jean’s help.

Can you see the raindrops on my lens? I put that camera through its paces, but I want it to be safe.

The porte cochére was pretty, and looked like something at a Southern country club. I like this shot of P,D&J. It looks like some kind of album cover. What sort of band would it be? Daniel as lead singer with Pettus and Jean on backup? I think it could sell!

Jean had read that you put on these oversized slippers with buffers on the bottom of them in order for you to be able to walk on the floor. I was looking forward to that, since I like the slidey feel of being in my sock feet. As we got our shoes, I started to take a picture of Jean’s feet in them. The guy at the front zoomed in to stop me immediately. “No pictures,” he said, not in an unfriendly tone, but matter of fact.

“I just want to take a picture of the shoes,” I protested.

“No pictures, please,” the guy repeated. “You will leave your camera inside.”

“Oh, all right,” I pouted, putting it aside and skulking to the counter where they would take it and put it in a locker. They wanted everything we had: umbrellas, cameras, the MawMaw purse. . .EVERYTHING. I wondered how the purse was gonna fit in the locker, but they managed, once one docent got behind the other to help her shove it in.

The foyer was grand and lovely, with doors opening to both of the first rooms in each wing. We shuffled down the hall to the dining room, which had the dinner table set with the finest china. It was beautiful and elegant, but once again, not any larger than many dining rooms I had seen. It was then that we all heard a strange noise and turned to each other to ask what it was. We promptly found out. Beyond the plexiglas that blocked the door, there was a mechanical thing, about the size of a sofa lamp, topped with a little video screen that played jerky, intermittent images of faces. The robot thing clicked and whirred, moving in stereotypical fashion, though it was rooted to the ground.

None of us got it at first. What the hell was going on? Was it a security camera of some kind? We then read the sign on the wall. This was just one of the installations by emerging, or prominent, or student artists designed just for the Imperial Museum. This robot thing was supposed to represent the servants that habited the palace, and how their slavery and/or servitude reduced them to their mechanical roots. The ever-changing faces were self-explanatory. I’ve gotta say, they started off with a bang as far as installations go, because the rest of them sucked, and were contrived and pretty stupid. And don’t tell me I don’t understand “statement” art, because I do. All too well, sometimes.

We skated to the next room, which was the Empress’ sewing parlor. She was fond of needlework, and would entertain ladies for hours as they sewed and gossiped. The feminine room was populated by about 8 matching chairs with tapestry covers. There were small tables all around, with the centerpiece being Her Highness’ sewing kit made out of all kind of weird imported ivory and stuff.

The art installation gag in this room nearly made us do just that: gag. It consisted of a gigantic pink intestine-looking thing that wormed its way through the chairs and around the room. The card said that it represented the thread that sewing provided to these ladies. Bah! It looked like an attempt to pull a Cristo in a tiny space by wrapping and decorating it. But it lacked the enormous scale and effort of a Cristo, and came off as distracting and stupid. I was in full gear and riding my aesthetic high horse proudly by this time. Daniel and Patricia and I had managed to end up in a clump together, so I entertained them with my hyperbolic criticisms and creative use of cuss words.

We had gotten separated from the others because Daniel and I decided to go find the bathroom, which was not in the house (duh). We had to shuffle across the floor, leave our overshoes, and head down stone steps into the garden to find it. The roof was very low, and it was still raining, so Daniel and I were ducking under the eaves to find our sanitário. I had turned around to say something clever to him when I ran right into a beam hanging under the eave. “Sheisskopf!” I shouted.

“What?” Daniel laughed, probably most at the injury.

“Sheisskopf,” I said. “It means ‘shit head’ in German.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” Daniel said. And he will, too. It’s probably already part of his vernacular. He latched onto “surreptitious” the first time I said it. It became our code word. But now, “sheisskopf” was coming up fast.

We found most of the others and continued rambling through the museum. The music room was on the end of the right wing, being a late addition, as a birthday present to DPII. The instruments were exquisite, including a gold harp that begged to be played. DPII and his family were all music lovers and many of them accomplished musicians themselves. The installation in this room involved giant backlit photos of a favela put over all the windows. The artist stated that, rather than see the beautiful garden of the rich when one looked out the room, he would see the pitiful poverty of a favela. It was kind of neat, and looked very strange when we first peered into the room.

This was when we started spotting the family portraits. Woo! These were some dog-ugly folks! And portraiture is supposed to be flattering. I’d hate to see what they really looked like. D,P& I had a blast running the royals down. I was riding a different high horse at this time: the superior saddle of the unrich and unwashed looking down on the cushy lifestyle of the royals.
Of course, it’s nothing but an elaborate ruse to cover some serious sour grapes, but who cares? It’s so much fun! By the time we had gotten out of the place and met Marcelo, I was blasting him with a diatribe that was just this side of communist. I assure
d him that I was no communist, and that I work my ass off, and that capitalism is the best, but I still couldn’t reconcile the favelas, or poverty in general, and can’t to this day.

We passed one of the formal sitting rooms, by now looking for the art gag first. Here we were met by a little sand castle sitting like a dog turd on a gorgeous rug. We all did a double take at first, then read the sign. It was some tripe about the temporary nature of sand castles, and just because you are so powerful, everything eventually deteriorates. I wondered how much of a grant these artists had received.

The crown jewels were appropriately impressive, and served to rev me up like a proletarian chainsaw. There was a jewelry box that Robo was fascinated with, marveling at how it got across the sea without being broken, due to its incredible delicacy.

Dom Pedro’s study was nice, but the most impressive item was on the desk: the first telephone in Brazil, installed by DPII after he had seen Edison’s display at the International Exposition of 1876. He couldn’t call many places. Well, one, actually. The lines ran only to his farm on the outside of town.

The upstairs featured a plethora of bedrooms with stupid art displays in them. The beds were all hugely austere and uncomfortable looking, and in the nursery, the two massive wood cribs looked like either one would comfortably house Rosemary’s baby. Cree-PEE!

On this floor, in a location that looked more like an afterthought, was a tiny little chapel, filled with religious artifacts. If people could get to heaven from an inventory like this one had, DP and Co. would be sitting at the Right Hand of the Father. Well, NEXT TO the Right Hand of the Father. I began a schtick about DP coming up there after having beaten or killed a servant, and how he would duck into the little chapel, give a little “Oops!” prayer and be good for the rest of the day. I’m sure he was a benevolent man, but he was the only one around to pick on at the time.

As we all headed back down the stairs, we were almost garroted by a bunch of strings that ran from the upstairs ceiling down through the stairwell. This near-lethal display represented the streams of light that come in the upstairs windows and spill down the stairs. Oh yeah.

In the diplomatic dining room, there were massive, ornate sideboards on each end of the room, and a plain but beautiful table about 20 feet long, with 20 or so chairs around it. Looking at the ceiling above the table was a giant image of the table and chairs as if reflected from a giant mirror. I don’t think the artist could even bullshit his way through this one.

In the serving pantry, we were met with shelves of serving pieces and odd, weird pieces of furniture with no apparent function. When we walked in, we kept hearing a tiny chorus of high pitched electronic chimes, to discover that there were little speakers placed all around the room, each one emitting a sound at a different interval. This was in conjunction with some blinking Christmas lights, also strewn haphazardly around. FASCINATING! I think this represented the servants again, as their lives were run by the various bells rung by the royals.

“Oh! I see what’s making the noise,” Robo said suddenly, picking up one of the speakers. Daniel, Patricia and I were still gawking at the absurdity. Suddenly the chiming stopped. Robo had obviously shorted out the music circuit. He carefully placed the speaker back down on the cabinet, and we gigglingly headed out the door, where we met Pettus and Jean.

They were about burned out on the place, so we began to peek quickly in the remaining rooms. They insisted on my looking at one of the royal portraits in one room closely. The woman looked like she had a harelip. But not really. But kind of. Did she?

One of the sitting rooms across the hall was nice, but like the girls said, an overload of elegant antique furnishings will wear you out, so I can’t describe the room much or what it was for, but I do remember Robo and me laughing at the art gag: four pots of white flowers that looked artificial but harmless, until all the flowers would begin to rotate furiously in the pots for about 10 seconds, then stop. Cool. Arty. Meaningful. WTF??

On that note, we headed to the locker room to get our stuff and glided to the front door. We doffed our overshoes, gave a round of obrigadoes, and met Marcelo, who was outside waiting on us. He pointed out that there was a little refreshment place inside the garages that housed DP’s carriages.

This was for royal occasions. I could imagine the ambivalent feelings of the people as the royals paraded through the streets of Petrópolis. Given that there were so many upper class living there, I’m sure they didn’t receive anything more than public platitudes. . .until they screwed up.

The everyday carriage was really nice. And they also had the engine of the Leopodina on a section of track next to the refreshment center. The train was named after Dom Pedro II’s second daughter, and once ran a vital route.

I sent this picture to Marcelo with what I Babel Fished as “I hope this train doesn’t start to move.” It’s surely wrong. When you feed it back in to check it, it sure as hell doesn’t say that.

Of course, Daniel got something to eat at the snack bar, then we headed out into the spitting rain to the car, bypassing the magnetic pull of the souvenir booths at the entrance. It was time to see the cathedral.