On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning, Everyone!
This last day of 2019, we’re off to Brazil! What a treat, and there’s more coming next year.
Have a safe and enjoyable New Year, 2020 will be a hard slog to push these bastards out and to accommodate to what we don’t succeed in.
After we left Dakar, we sailed for four days across the Atlantic and landed in Recife, Brazil, where it was unbelievably hot. We did a walking tour there. The city has the oldest synagogue in the Americas, but I don’t seem to have taken a picture of it. Then we went to Rio, which has an absolutely gorgeous harbor. You sail past all these islands. It was foggy, which made it even lovelier, but also made it impossible to see the statue of Christ the Redeemer. (To be perfectly truthful, I think a giant statue of Jesus is tacky. YMMV).
The guide talked a lot about carnival, stressing it as central to their culture. This giant rooster is apparently a carnival symbol. Who knew?
The walking tour took us along the harbor and then down this long pedestrian street where she said everything happened. The houses are charmingly pastel.
The first think you see when you get off the ship in Rio is these wall paintings. Rio encourages street art like this and sees it as beautification.
The building on the left that looks like a pyramid is a cathedral. It was designed to look like Inca buildings. The bell tower is to the right.
We took a walking tour in Rio and saw many lovely buildings. This is the Municipal Theater, which is modeled after the opera house in Paris.
Baud
What a big cock!
JPL
The pictures are lovely and I love murals and wall art. Walking down the street with a guy staring at you is a little creepy though. Am I suppose to know who that is a painting of?
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
No one’s ever said that to Donald Trump. He needs to put a 10-foot tall fibreglass rooster, painted gold of course, on the front lawn at Mar-a-Lago.
satby
Love the pastel buildings and the wall art! Thanks for sharing them, Dorothy!
JPL
Dorothy, I hope you’ll post most more pictures of your trip.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
It appears to be a man of indigenous heritage, maybe a tribal leader.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: Thank you.. I thought that there had to be some significance but wasn’t sure. Still creepy
debbie
@JPL:
Looks like it was for the Olympics.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL:
I sent pics of Montevideo and Buenos Aires too, but on at least one occasion, I forgot my phone, so there are fewer than there should be. We should have sent a better photographer.
Minstrel Michael
I’ve been there too, but not for over a decade. I married a woman who was huge into Brazilian culture, especially the music– even learned to speak Portuguese, tried to teach it to me, with limited success. But every real vacation we took was to Brazil, half a dozen times, and she took a couple trips without me. And I went back once more, to throw her ashes into the ocean off “our” beach, Praia do Camburi in Espirito Santo state, six hours north of Rio (with roughly the same climate, but none of the glamor).
Recife, on the other hand, is really poor, which means it’s unbelievably cheap to live there. We had this friend who’d overstayed his visa (by many years) and then trusted the wrong people, and when La Migra caught up with him they were determined to oust him. So he went back to Recife and got a job as an English teacher (since he’d been in the United States long enough to learn our language convincingly), but not enough customers meant his income was dodgy. We bought him a condo. (I had a real good tech job then.) It cost less than a new car here. Three blocks from there was a large Catholic church, facing a park where homeless people try to make a living selling random stuff to passersby, anything from snacks to towels to bootleg DVDs, and some of them probably sleep there too. Another job that proliferates on the street is repairing punctures in soccer balls! Pernicious poverty. I understand one of the few growth industries there is cement, out of which practically all the housing is built.
Did they take you across the river to see Olinda, its remarkably different twin city? That’s the antique and artsy part, dominated by a hill with walkable streets spiraling up to a tourist-oriented summit, but on the way up are lovely cathedrals and artists’ ateliers. That’s probably the Brazilian site I miss most.
Also, a bus ride out of town, Francisco Brennand’s sculpture garden. He’s the guy responsible for the Torre de Cristal dominating the coast opposite the old town. Wikipedia informs me that he just died a couple weeks ago :-(
J R in WV
Thanks for sharing some of your trip with us.
I guess sailing across the Atlantic was pretty much just water for hundreds of miles… exciting in some sense, but boring photographically…
Glad you had a good time!
arrieve
Thanks for sharing your trip, Dorothy, and looking forward to your continuing adventures. Brazil is one of the few countries I haven’t been that interested in visiting, but I love those colors and the murals.
Mary G
What a great experience you had! Thanks for taking me along.
JPL
@debbie: That was so informative and thanks for that link.
Tenar Arha
@Minstrel Michael: Wow. Sincere thanks for sharing.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Oh, Baud, what would we do without you?
WaterGirl
I love big
cocksroosters and I cannot lie.Seriously, I love that colorful rooster. Bright, happy, absurd. Trifecta!
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
Was In Recife and Rio a year and a half ago. Definitely see Olinda, it’s beautiful. Also downtown has some nice historic architecture including some nice old churches. Just outside the city are two places worth a visit associated with the Brennand brothers. One is an art collection one of them acquired displayed on the former family compound. The other is Francisco Brennand’s ceramic studio – he’s justifiably a world famous ceramecist and has a huge portion of his work on display there.
Rio is fantastic. So much to see. Really liked Ipanema beach and the botanical gardens. Just walking around taking in the views was great. We stayed in a place called The Maze that is in a small favela called Tavaros Bastos. Up the hillside from the middle class neighborhood of Catete. It was safe, but the accommodations are very Spartan. It’s run by a very colorful British expat. It’s chief virtues are him, the spectacular view, which is one of the best in Rio, and the rogues gallery of youngsters globetrotting on shoestring budgets.