Leaving the beautiful coast of Brazil to follow the twisting road leading to the city of Petropolis, we began our exploration of middle Brazil. Brazil is huge and much like the US, most people live along the coast or in large cities. The road to Petropolis took us through farmlands and wide expanses of empty land. Petropolis was built during the gold rush days of Brazil and was named a city in 1832, ten years after Brazil declared independence from Portugal. The first Emperor, Pedro I, chose the city for his summer residence. Over the next decade, he built his summer palace and all his rich friends followed. As a result, Petropolis was an odd event to find in the mountains of Brazil. The streets were lined by huge mansions that overlooked water canals that ran throughout the city. When we arrived in Petropolis, we headed directly to the Bohemian Brewery for lunch and a tour. The restaurant served mostly German food and had an amazing bread made from left over brewery ingredients. We had a huge plate of sausages and some more bread so it was a great start to Petropolis. The brewery was a self-guided tour that included four 4 ounce samples of beer each. The tour covered 4 floors and was very well done. Being the lightweight of our pair, I was handing my remaining samples over to Bill by the time we reached the third floor. Our hotel in Petropolis was housed in one of the old mansions and while it needed a little TLC, the architecture was amazing. For the afternoon, we walked across the street to the main cathedral for our daily church fix. By the time dinner rolled around, we were not really hungry so we set out to find something small to nibble. We came across a hotdog food truck and decided a hotdog would be the perfect dinner. I puzzled the hotdog vendor when I did not want corn, olives, peppers or any of the other odd-to-me hotdog items on my hotdog. She looked a little sad as she handed me my hotdog with only crunchy potato sticks and ketchup. We were quite happy though because our dinner cost under $5.00 which was a nice change from Rio and Paraty!
We woke early the next morning to visit the Imperial Museum which was housed in Pedro’s summer palace. When we entered the foyer, a guard handed us these odd slippers that looked like old flip flops. We were instructed to leave our shoes on and slide our feet into the slippers. Slippers was a good word for these particular shoes because they made the floors super slippery! I managed not to kill myself by sliding my feet as if I was ice skating. Bill finally gave up on keeping his size 12W feet in his slippers, took his shoes off and went around in his socks. The museum had some interesting items but our greatest entertainment was trying to find one of the royal family members that was even remotely attractive. If painted portraits back in the day reportedly made people look better than they did in real life, Pedro’s family was in deep trouble! Our next stop was Casa Santos Dumont. Mr. Dumont was born to a wealthy father whose only requirement for Santos was that he be learned and do something amazing. No pressure there! Santos lived up to his father’s ideal and then some. He was an inventor and was the Wright Brothers of Brazil. He designed and built airplanes and was Brazil’s Father of Aviation. In fact, the airport in Rio was named after Santos. His house was tiny and unassuming with only two rooms and a bathroom and I got the feeling I would have liked Santos very much. For lunch, we went to the chocolate café. I had one of the best chocolate milkshakes I ever had! Following lunch, we headed down the street to find another chocolate shop because a gal can never have enough chocolate. We found the shop tucked into a courtyard. The courtyard was full of middle school children whose teachers evidently thought taking kids to a chocolate shop for a field trip was a smart plan. We sat outside the shop watching the children chow on chocolate and get louder and louder by the minute. Once the crowd had thinned, we made our way to the counter and had a good laugh with the proprietor about the insanity. Grabbing our own bag full of hyperactivity, we finished our Petropolis leg on a high note! Returning down the twisty mountain road, we made our way back to Rio to catch our flight to Belo Horizonte (pronounced Belo Horizonch in good Portuguese fashion). The domestic airport sat in the middle of the bay in Rio and had the shortest runway I had ever seen. Bill explained to me that we were going to do be doing a short-field takeoff. Thank goodness he explained that to me prior to the actual take off or I would have had a heart attack. A short-field take off involves the pilot holding the brake, revving the engine up to “take off” speed and then letting the plane shoot off like a rocket! Add in the fact that we had to take a sharp turn to avoid hitting Sugarloaf Mountain and the whole thing was quite terrifying! Luckily, the rest of the flight was uneventful and we landed in Belo Horizonte unscathed and on schedule. Our Brazil adventure will conclude with next week’s blog so we will see you then and you will meet some of the worst drivers in the world!
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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