Another Evening in Antipolo

          Our friends, Mike and Peter, invited us up to Antipolo to show my parents their historic home.  They had had us over for dinner back in September.  Mike’s driver picked us up around 4:00 and first brought us to Pinto Art Gallery.  A new wing of the museum had opened since our last visit, which seemed to more than double the size of the space.

part of the new wing

Triathlon painting: swimming on the left, biking in the middle, running on the right

After two hours touring through the many levels of the museum, we rode over to the home of Mike’s grandfather.  As we already wrote back in September, the house was originally located down in Manila near the bay, but after decades of flood scares, they made the enormous decision to relocate the entire home to a subdivision in the mountains of Antipolo.  Both the house and all of the furnishings inside have been impeccably preserved and being in the place really makes a person feel like he is back in the 1920s.  They prepared a tasty dinner for us complete with the ultra-rich and thick tsocolate and home-popped pinipig rice to sprinkle on top.  After dinner we all retreated to the sala for a tertulia-like evening and listened to Fritz play several of the 1920s jazz songs he has found in the National Library’s sheet music archive (here's a brief video of him playing a more Filipino-sounding piece).  The rain had drizzled off and on all day on Sunday and it made for a cool, pleasant evening temperature to be sitting around Mike’s open home. 

after dinner

Mike and Peter have already invited us to view some of the Good Friday celebrations up in a province north of Manila so we're looking forward to that trip.