December 24 - And it's Christmas Eve in the Portuguese Settlement

 One of the first things we noticed the first night we were in our new apartment were the colorful lights that lit up one small section of Melaka near our new apartment.  It turn's out it is the Portuguese Settlement.  These are the Kristang people - or mixed Malay and Portuguese people.  They kept the Catholic faith and they really celebrate Christmas.  It is the thing to do on Christmas Eve to go and walk the streets in the area and look at all the decorated homes.  So that is what we did.

First - a couple of morning shots from our balcony.  It has been cloudy with little sun since we have gotten here during the day.

Next we head to the Portuguese Settlement.  As our Grab trip to Dutch Square earlier - it takes 

f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get to the location for drop off.  And then you walk around and take in the sights.  

There are a couple of "can't miss" spots where you must take a group photo.  This was one.

But mostly you just enjoy looking at the houses and their decorations.  As you can see, most of the homes are behind metal gates.

Another "must not miss" photo op is in front of Jesus.

There were a few food offerings - thank goodness - as we had not had dinner.  We had hoped to get dinner at one of the famous seafood restaurants in the area - but were disabused of this by our Grab driver as those are booked out weeks ahead of time.

And so many things to buy - notice the headgear as well as the balloons above.  There were a lot of other options for headgear - which I managed to avoid photographing.

We plan to go back to the Portuguese Settlement on a weeknight to try one of the seafood restaurants on a less busy night.

That is our apartment building in the background. 

After a very long wait for our Grab driver to pick us up, we managed to get back home.  I ended up staying up till after midnight taking photos and enjoying the view from our balcony.  Fireworks went off erratically all evening.  But just a few minutes before midnight it was like our Fourth of July.  So beautiful.  As you can see below - most areas if the city were quiet.