Niterói, Niemeyer, and Nights at the Boteca

Day 2: Niterói, Brazil

June 9, 2010

After finally getting sleep at Rosi's house in Niterói (across the bay from Rio de Janeiro), Rosi, Luis, and I went for a walk for several hours along the beach near her house. As you can see from the picture below, it was so beautiful and peaceful...the only people we really passed were a herd of guys in sungas (speedo-like suits, very popular with the guys in Brazil) that were jogging by.

View from the rocks we climbed at the end of the beach.

After a delicious lunch of some special dish that is popular during Christmastime (a casserole of chicken, creamed corn, milk and a bunch of other stuff, covered with small potato straws on top), Rosi dropped Luis and I off in the center of Niterói, where we walked through a beautiful park until we reached another gorgeous beach called Praia Caribe. After walking the length of the beach, we headed up to the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (Contemporary Art Museum) built by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who I'll talk a lot more about throughout my blogs, I'm sure. But check out his Wikipedia page to see some of his buildings! All
his buildings are modernist and really unique, as you can see from just this museum.

View from inside the museum of Niterói

After checking out the modern art exhibits inside, we were off in search of some other places to see. Along the way, we met a girl from Indonesia who was traveling around and spoke with her in English, which felt kinda weird, even after only two days of speaking straight Portuguese. We kept walking around looking for the Solar de Jambiqueiro, which is a Portuguese colonial building covered in azulejos (intricate ceramic tiles). Unfortunately, it was under renovation, but we went to a different museum called Museu de Ingá, an old palace-turned-art museum before wandering our way back down to Praia Caribe.

The World Cup (A Copa Mundial) is currently going on, and for those who don't know, soccer here is like an intense religion. I hear from everyone how the whole country shuts down for games, and I've been seeing Brazilian flags and other displays of national pride that apparently only come out during the Copa. They even have contests for neighborhoods for the best decorations for the Copa, as you can see below from one of the neighborhoods we passed.

When we met back up with Rosi, she took us to a boteca, which is sort of like a bar place that people will go to and have a cerveja (beer) and salgadas (fried dough filled with different fillings such as shrimp, chicken, beef, etc) in order to wait out rush hour traffic. We ended up staying there for several hours because some of Rosi's friends came to meet us too and we ended up having a blast talking and trying the different salgadas. We also had guaraná, which is a really popular soda in Brazil... I don't know how to describe, but I really like it despite not being a huge fan of soda in general.

Our new friends at the boteca

Me trying guaraná soda, yum!

Overall, it was a really fun night, and we had to rush back to pack up and catch an overnight bus to São Paulo..which you will hear about in the next blog!

Until then, Coli