Modern Brazil
So due to some serrendipitous accidents, I found myself in Curitiba, a tiny but really interesting city in southern brazil. One of my mom's oldest friends, Siomara, lives here. In fact, when i was first organizing moving down to brazil, she offered me a place to live! So i spent the morning tracking down her phone number; luckily she was listed and we hooked up later at her office.
After leaving her a message, I hit the town. I had learned alot about Curitiba from the German girls, people on the bus, and guidebook research I'd done on the bus. For a small city there was a lot to do. After getting breakfast at the Mercado Municipal (right by the bus terminal, totally worth checking out), I hoofed it down to the botanical gardens, where I wanderd around taking picures of flowers and getting attacked by local birds.
Afterwards, I took a bus to the downtown area where the german girls told me I cuold entertain myself walking around. It was a monday, so all the museums were closed, but there was ´plenty enough to see on my feet. Took way too many pictures.
Curitiba is way different from other brazilian cities I've seen. It's clean. There aren't poor people everywhere. everything is really modern and well organized. It's like brazil's seattle.
After meeting up with Siomara, she insisted that I crash at her house (which i was kinda hoping for). Her family took me out to dinner at this Italian Rodizio in the Italian quarter (santa felicidade). Little did I know, the restaurant is actually in the guiness book of records for most food served in an hour or something like that. Good food, too.
I was hoping to hang out with the grermans that night, but we were all too tired so after getting back from dinner, I crawled into bed and passed out.
