Places of Worship

Jakarta’s National Mosque and Catholic Cathedral are across the street from each other, which is convenient for sightseeing.

We taxi to St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Cathedral, choosing to visit it first since it closes from noon to 3 pm each day. We must sign in, recording our passport number, and are each provided a lanyard with a guest pass. We walk around the Cathedral and it’s grotto. It’s a nice church and grotto, but not overly impressive.

​The Istiqlal Mosque, Indonesia’s National Mosque and the third-largest Sunni mosque in the world, is undergoing renovation and the entrance across the street from the Cathedral is closed. We have 45 minutes before the next service, and the Mosque is closed to visitors during services. Finding an open entrance as we walk around the perimeter is frustrating. Finally we walk down a construction roadway toward the building. At that point we are not sure we will have enough time to explore the mosque before the prayer service. We decide to skip seeing the interior. We walk back out the muddy construction road and signal a taxi.

Our afternoon meal is at Public Markette, definitely not a Muslim-centric restaurant. There is alcohol and pork on the menu! Given the chance, we go for it. William orders a Guinness and the pork belly while I order a glass of wine and a pork chop. As the server sets down my wine she explains to William that they are out of Guinness, but they have a local beer. Disappointed, William doesn’t think the local beer is worth it and he orders a carbonated water. The food is great and we both enjoy our entrees.

​As I have on other evenings tonight I stand on the balcony for a while listening to the city and taking in our view. There are tall buildings, including the white Shagri-La hotel and another distinctive blue building which reflect in a small somewhat polluted pond. It appears that they may be in the process of cleaning up the pond, but I can’t be sure. Next to it the concrete base of another large foot-print building is being poured. The concrete mixing plant is next door and I hope that once the building is near completion the area will become a park with green space. This city of 10 million (30 million in the metro area) with so many tall business, condo and apartment buildings can use some place for people to get out. However, with an air pollution index which all too frequently falls into the unhealthy category there is much additional work.