On to Florianopolis: Brazil Part 13

After about 10 days in São Paulo, and our day trip to Rio, we headed to the airport and made our way to beautiful Florianopolis. 

Something that we loved about traveling in Brazil was the (required) preference given to not only people with disabilities, but also seniors, pregnant women, and mothers (or fathers I suspect) with young children. 

Maybe because this is their law, it also seems to be just a part of their culture. For example, people were so kind on subways and buses and almost always stood up to give a seat to one of us with the kids if there was space. At the airport, when the attendants would see our big group, they opened up a new lane just for us (this could be also that they knew other passengers wouldn't love waiting while they checked in 9 foreign passengers... :) Even the grocery stores had special lines (and as a mom with young children I thought this was pretty great!)

We landed after a short flight, and even got to enjoy a movie-star style departure down the steps attached to the plane!

Another interesting airport note: one (or more?) of our flights had us take a bus from the terminal where we were waiting directly out to the airplane. 

We arrived to find our two tiny rental cars waiting for us :) (and a friendly tour van driver who volunteered to chauffer our belongings and led the way to our rental house)

These guys kept themselves happily entertained while the grownups worked on checking in and getting everything with the cars all settled and situated. Then off we went...

To this lovely place! After researching what we could about Florianopolis, we narrowed down our housing search to the Jurerê  neighborhood. (We found this house using homeaway.com) We knew that Jurerê was one of the nicer areas of Florianopolis, but we didn't know exactly what that would mean (would it be modern? more rural? fancy or not-so-fancy?)  It turned out to be a very beautiful neighborhood with lots of really great homes with beautiful (gated, not walled!) yards  (though we still had some Brazilian wildlife: ants, mosquitios, a bat, something that loved to scurry around the roof above our room,  and even a cockroach (but just one, hooray!) Still it turned out to be a really great place to stay :)

Our street!

Lots of space to visit and relax and eat and play

And a great pool out front that the kids swam in nearly every day of our stay!

Up next: all the beaches and other Florianopolis fun

Let me take you to Rio! Brazil Part 12

image

We almost didn't go to Rio - We were super late making up our minds about our day trip there, and prices had gone up on airfare. But at the last minute (practically) we decided to just go for it, and I'm so happy we did. We had a busy, happy day trip and loved what we got to see and do!



April, Jordan and I took Landon and Ellie and we flew in to Rio on a morning flight from São Paulo. (Super cool thing: we'd left ourselves plenty of time by getting to the airport quite early. As we were finishing our check in, we had the option to just take an earlier flight rather than waiting for another 1 1/2 hours until our scheduled one - awesome! The same thing happened on our return trip home - we got there early that evening, just in case, and ended up moving up to an earlier flight than we had scheduled - hooray for flexible airports!)

We got to Rio and let the kids climb and play in the trees and rocks just outside while we planned our route to the nearest bus stop. 

Soccer courts (if I remember right there was just one after another of these, side by side, for at least a block or more)

While we were in Brazil, Jordan and April used google maps to figure out which buses to get and where. So we caught our bus and got a little mini-tour of the city on our way to our first stop - Copacabana beach!

And oh, it was beautiful! I just loved the amazing mix of skyscrapers, mountains, sand and ocean. These kids had fun splashing and digging and building. 

 I hadn't thought ahead about stopping at the beach (or dressed/packed for it), so I just sat back and happily watched and enjoyed the amazing views. 

The last few years, we've watched the fireworks on Copacabana beach for New Year's Eve (since Brazil is a few hours ahead of us, and an early new year celebration is just right for us right now :)
And the craziest bit of our trip for me was just realizing we were there -- in that same spot where we'd watched the enormous crowds celebrating for the past few years, across the world from us -- and we were right there in that spot - we were really having this great adventure!

Along the beach, there were several of these giant, detailed sandcastles. Only after we'd seen a few of them did we realize maybe they were wood castles+sand, but they were still fun to look at :)

We were eating at Gaucho Grill one day (before we'd really gotten serious about taking our trip) and Ellie saw a view of the Christ the Redeemer Statue on their big tv screen up on the wall, and said  "I want to go there!" And though we didn't take the ride up to the statue itself, we caught little glimpses of it throughout our day in the city.  (Like just barely up above that "Copacabana Palace" building above)

As we finished at Copacabana, we walked along the (super cool!) sidewalk while April and Landon walked along the beach on our way to Ipanema Beach.

(Landon and April)

 We stopped to grab some flipflops for Landon (who had very soggy shoes...) And also stepped inside this fun t-shirt store with the coolest fabric wall-papering (I'm still trying to figure out a place we could do this in our home, because I just loved it so!)

Then a quick stop at "The Girl from Ipanema" park

And a short stay at Ipanema Beach (here's our own little girl from Ipanema :) Oh, so beautiful!

We started our search for lunch, and saw a 'farmers market' that we stepped in to explore. But we quickly made our way back out - the market had just ended and all of the booths were closing up -- and it was pretty crazy and chaotic (and smelly with lots of fish/fish parts still awaiting clean up...)

So on we went to our last stop at the Botanical Garden. And it was just amazing. 

We saw this little guy and his monkey friends climbing in a tree near the entrance.

And stopped for a late lunch at the garden's restaurant - a great little French Cafe.

And then exploring! Such an incredibly beautiful place. The wildness of the rainforest with the earthy trails and the bright exotic flowers...

There's Ellie's favorite statue again! 

And we can chill in my gazebo, gazebo... 

That philodendron! This is my favorite inside plant because it is super, amazingly resilient -- but I never imagined what it would look like in the real world! (We saw several other familiar plants - only wild and enormous and happily growing in every which way instead of carefully placed in a little pot on the counter)

And another gazebo - the song is true! :)

I don't know if I've ever been in a more beautiful place, really. What a delight! But, as our last stop, we finally had to hurry ourselves out to make it back to the airport. 

We bartered for a good taxi fare and the driver (eager for the work) agreed to take us on a little detour past the lake on the way to the airport. And what a view. Again, such stunning contrasts -  Those mountains! That skyline! The beautiful lake! And all mixed together, what a beautiful place.

image

São Paulo sights: Brazil Part 11

We spent so much time before our trip working out how to get there and where to stay, that even a few weeks before our departure we hadn't really made any set plans about what to actually do when we finally made it to Brazil! Since none of us had been there to São Paulo before, here's what we did (mainly, that I can remember) to come up with our plans: 

* Jordan talked with a tutor at verbling and asked lots of general travel questions early on in our planning. 

* Just before we left, Jordan talked for a few hours with a friend of a friend of Kathie's who lives in São Paulo right now and got great recommendations on neighborhoods and restaurants and such. 

* I read all I could online. I searched for Brazilian mommy-blogs and Brazilian traveling-with-kids sites and also read lots of the trip advisor and frommers travel guides for ideas and tips.

* We talked a lot with Landon's teacher at school who moved here from São Paulo last year. She was a huge help to us!

* Winslow and Kathie took care of lots of the logistic kinds of things for us, like registering with the embassy there in case something happened, finding out about money and phones, getting information early on about health concerns/vaccinations (and reminding us to take care of those too)

And with all that, we came up with some great plans! Mostly we stuck with one thing each day, and that was just about right. 

AVENIDA PAULISTA

We stayed right next to this main street in São Paulo, so we spent a bit of time along here. One of our first days though we just road the metro from our end of the street to the opposite end and walked back stopping at interesting spots along the way. (Like the beautiful park!)

LIVRARIA CULTURAL

This is a big bookstore along Avenida Paulista where we browsed for books and movies while the little ones had fun playing and reading inside this dragon. 

IBIRAPUERA PARK

We spent a day here (more here) walking and biking and watching the kids play on many of the playgrounds and outdoor gyms.



MUSEU DO FUTEBOL

I wrote all about it herehttp://debbie.broughs.net/2015/07/futebol-brazil-part-9.html. A fun peak at the history of Brazil through the eyes of soccer-lovers.


MERCADO MUNICIPAL

peppers for Jordan! 

An introduction to all sorts of new tropical fruits we'd never seen or tasted. Like a permanent farmer's market, except enormous! (more here)




RUA 25 DE MARCO

This is a shopping district right next to the Mercado Municipal. We walked through and were surprised most of all by the specialty stores available (like the hanger store above -- that picture is just about the entire store!) A hanger store, a cookie cutter store, a ribbon store (actually lots of ribbon stores), a belt store... We also saw a store that was one wall of kitchen utensils and containers and gadgets and  the opposite wall tools and saws and drills - a funny mix!

We met a member of the church with a little newspaper stand and loved her simple missionary efforts in sharing these magazines and books (the little note in front there said 'free')




PUERI DOMUS

A highlight of our trip was visiting this beautiful school, both for their international night activities and for a tour/time in class the following day.

And Jordan found a beautiful neighborhood nearby for us to walk through, plus a lovely park with pristine trails and playground!




VILLA MADALENA

This was just a fun and interesting neighborhood to explore. It was the first place where we really saw other families and parents with strollers. We'd read that we might find some dancing at the cafes or restaurants ("Samba Saturday") But though we didn't run into any dancing, we still enjoyed wandering and seeing the interesting street art :) And we stopped at a fun toy store here and brought home a few Brazilian games. 

A STREET BOOKSTORE (how's that for an unfancy heading)

I was really hoping to bring home lots of books and we found a great little outdoor book sale with cheaper books (especially with some bargaining). Owen and Porter curiously watched this tall man (on stilts) while we browsed the books.

SÃO PAULO TEMPLE

More here. Looking at these pictures again reminds me just how beautiful the temple and also the churches and grounds were.


BELA VISTA

Sometimes we had to look more closely to catch the beauty of the buildings here (sometimes not, like above!) but there really were some beautiful spots in this neighborhood.

This building ("castle" in Ellie's words) was for sale and we joked that it could  be our next home.


BANKING AREA/BANESPA BUILDING

One day our destination was to see the city sights from above at the Banespa Building. Unfortunately, we were a bit slow making our way there and by the time we arrived, the building was closed for the day. But, we still enjoyed all the sights to see on the way and loved the well-kept area all around it  (that sidewalk path through all the buildings gave the entire area such a cool feel). 

giant centavos!

SÃO PAULO CATHEDRAL

Our happy crew (minus Jordan taking the picture). This cathedral was really quite beautiful. We stepped inside just for a moment, and got to show the kids the stained glass windows. And we saw sister missionaries teaching out in front (as well as a group gathered around close by with a very animated street preacher). 

BUTANTAN INSTITUTE SERPENTARIUM

If we hadn't had to pay a crazy amount on the taxi ride, I think we might have enjoyed our time here even more! :) Even so, this was a pretty cool place. They had tons of exhibits of every kind of snake you've ever heard of (and then many more!) with cool facts about each kind (like some who can 'see' with heat sensing - cool!)

The institute here also creates snake bite anti-venoms,  so we got to learn a little bit about how that whole process works (again, cool!) I hadn't known what a process it was (it takes months) or that each type of snake requires a different antivenom (so if you're bitten, it's super helpful to know what kind of snake bit you!)

While April and Landon and I were at the Serpentarium, the rest of our group stopped by the Sam's Club and Walmart next to our airport hotel (Yep, there's a Walmart even in Brazil!) and picked up some last minute treasures to bring home (like some maracuja concentrate, yum!)