more brazil

well, i'm back from brazil and it was great!  not at all what i expected.  here's some pics from the trip.

here's the porto alegre skyline from the plane after we landed, and a picture of my two travel mates, candy and jill:

our hotel was in this area called moinhos de vento, and is apparently an upscalee neighborhood of the city.  there was a fancy mall connected to the hotel, so that definitely made for some convenient shopping; i bought three pairs of shoes on a five day trip - not good!  porto alegre is the fourth largest city in brazil, but it felt really small.  i had been to costa rica and mexico, and was expecting similar, but brazil was totally different.  there was a strong european feel, and there is a dominant german, italian and japanese presence there - did you know that the largest japanese population outside of japan is in sao paulo?  i didn't either.  so, the city was filled with charming shops and storefronts, and low-rise residential buildings and brownstones. 

and the food!  the food was fabulous!  of course, we went to a churrascaria, the brazilian barbecue, but i expected that to be good.  what i didn't expect was how good everything else was!  monday night we went to a thai place called "koh pee pee", which sounds like something i would tell cal to do.  the food was yummy, but the decor an ambience was what made the place stand out.  tuesday night was a french/italian restaurant, whose name i can't remember - great risotto.  wednesday night was na brasa, the barbecue place, which was much more utilitarian than i expected.  having been to fogo de chao, i was expecting something similar, and na brasa was much more like your no nonsense local kind of place.  of course, the meat was still great, and it was a bunch of fun.  one thing about na brasa is that it was a lot less expensive.  fogo charges about US$40-50 per person, and at na brasa, i think it was about US$15 per person, which was a bargain.

our last night, one of the girls from work took us out for pasta.  a couple of blocks from our restaurant was usina de massas, which i think translates to house of pasta, or something like that.  babelfish gives it some kind of wierd translation.  anyways, this was my favorite place because we ate outside and the weather was gorgeous.  it was in the 70's, an occasional breeze, under trees and the night sky, no bugs - awesome.  the single serving was still a big pot of pasta, i had to be rolled out of there at the end of the evening.

Comments

[Jonathan & Jill Fiur]

Did you know that the Japanese word Arrigato is from the Brasilan Obrigado? It is! So says my pal Eduardo who works in Mercer Sap Paulo. Next time you go, please let me know. I have a coulpe of good peeps to hook you up with.

[Adrian]

Woohoo! Living it up in Brazil... :)