1. Gabi at Praia Jabaquara 2. Igreja Matriz 3. Gabi walking in historic Parati 4. Gabi e seu Papae
Saturday we were supposed to go to Andre’s uncle’s house in the country, but we slept in really late, and Andre didn’t go anyway, and it was raining, so it worked out well that we didn’t go. We stayed in the house a lot, because it was raining, and then in the afternoon, Andre came and got us and took us out to Habib’s, a Middle Eastern fast food chain. We had s’fiha’s, which are kind of like little pizzas, and hummus. Gabi didn’t really like the s’fiha, but she liked the pita’s that came with the hummus, and the crust of the s’fiha. After that we went to the mall again, to get some more groceries. Andre was craving a milkshake, so we went to a place inside the mall and got some. He and Shelley got ovaltine, it had little malt ball pieces in it, which Shelley loved, and I got chocolate, which was great.
We got back to the apartment and had to take showers, because Dre was taking us to his cousin’s birthday party, at his Aunt’s house. We had a really good time at the party. Ella was really excited for all the desserts that were there, and it was fun talking to Andre’s family. They were all super nice, and surprised that I could speak Portuguese and everyone who knew a little bit of English spoke what the could to us. Gabi played with Gu a lot, and with some of Dre’s younger cousins, one of whom was just like Shelley’s cousin Jasmine. After we had sung “Parabens pra Voce” the Portuguese version of “Happy Birthday”, we got to eat the cake, which was a coconut cake. Gabi had so much of that and of Brigadeiro (a ball of dulce de leche with chocolate sprinkles) that she threw up. Then she wanted more, which we didn’t let her have. When we got back to the apartment it was time for bed and we watched a few tv shows in English.
On Sunday was the day the whole bread story happened, Nate got confused and thought it was Friday but it was Sunday. After we all had some breakfast we hung around the house and played and just relaxed until it was lunch time and we all went over to Titia’s house. They had made pasta, sauce with tuna and without tuna, salad, chicken, and fresh mango juice. We all ate a good lunch and Gu and Gabi played again. They both started jumping on the bed and were having a great time with Dre and his sister Adriana. We tried to get Gabi to take a nap but too much was going on so we took her to the park with Gu. They had lots of fun on the slide and teeter-totter. After the park we were ready for dinner so we went to get some authentic Brazilian pizza for the second time. Dre thought he was taking us to an all you can eat pizza joint which sounded great but when we got there, it was the wrong place, we decided to stay anyways. We ordered a pizza with half four cheese and half sausage. When the pizza arrived it was crazy, the sausage side had no cheese. It was crust with sausage, not the American sausage that comes on pizza more like a kielbasa sausage cut in big slices, covering every inch except the crust. And then the sausage was covered with a million little white onion rings all over it. The cheese side was a little more recognizable as pizza but it was still very different, the cheeses were very strong and there was a blue cheese on the pizza, I thought that was odd, plus when you order a four cheese pizza in the states you can’t really tell where one cheese ends and the other begins. You know it is well mixed, no, not on this pizza it was crazy you could see each cheese individually on the pizza. Ok enough about the pizza. So we ate and left, oh yeah Gabi was asleep on Nate and my lap all through dinner. So as we got ready to leave she woke up and asked are we going to get pizza, oops it was all gone!! On the way home we told her we would get her something to eat, but we also needed to get some more money before leaving Sao Paulo. Dre drove us all over creation looking for a Citibank ATM and on the way we ran into a road block with cops. One was stopping cars holding a hand gun at his chest ready to use it, and another had a rifle, luckily they waved us through and we didn’t even have to stop. Dre said maybe there was a bank robbery or something. So we finally got to the ATM, Citibank that is and got out cash. As Dre was driving us home we were kind of being followed by cops, they had their lights on but no siren and I said “Oh no, Dre we are being pulled over.” He said “They don’t do that in Brazil, people don’t get pulled over by cops on the road, they get tickets in the mail, from cameras on the street.” But he thought it odd they seemed to be following us. Because he was so concerned about it, he ended up driving in a complete circle trying to loose them and they still kept following us, finally we made a turn toward the house and they didn’t follow any more. It was a pretty exciting night all in all!
When we got home it was time to pack because this was to be our last night in Sao Paulo, we had decided we were going to Parati (pronounced Para-chee) in Rio de Janeiro state. It had been in contemplation the past few days if we wanted to head straight for Rio or go somewhere else. We thought Rio was a little too big and wanted to go somewhere we thought Gabi could be a little freer. In Sao Paulo it is such a big city (at least 17 million people, and as far as the eye can see) we felt she had to be glued to our side and didn’t want her to talk to loud because then it would be obvious we were foreigners. Parati is a little town(about 17,000) and on the coast so we decided this was ideal. We packed everything up and tried to lighten our load a little so we could travel better. Well let me say we are one bar of soap, one pack of wipes, a book and a jar of vitiams lighter, what a difference that made. We are still traveling with 2 huge backpacks, and two day packs, Gabi’s backpack, Gabi’s bed and my sea green ESPRIT beach bag straight from the 80’s. Oh yeah, we made a big decision to leave the stroller in Sao Paulo, which we still aren’t sure was a great idea in the end. Ok so to say the least it was a long night with little sleep and lots of packing. And after we finished packing we tried to take care of some stuff on the computer which kept us up even longer. And in all of this hubbub, Shelley forgot to put a diaper on Gabriella when she went to sleep, and of course she peed all over her Dora bed.
We woke up Monday morning at 5:30 with plans to take the 8am bus to Parati, and Anderson said he would drive us cutting out traveling on a bus and two trains. After dealing with the pee bed and dragging all of our stuff downstairs and cramming it into Anderson’s two door little car, we were on our way to Tiete (Chee-eh-tay) bus station. We got there at 7, bought two tickets for Parati, kids under six ride for free, and eat and stay for free at a lot of places, which is nice. We had photocopied our passports earlier, and used these to fill out our information on the tickets. We hauled our junk down stairs to the gate, and had some donuts and cheese bread for our breakfast. Gabi liked the donut so much she threw up. It was a sugar covered, chocolate stuffed donut, and she hasn’t been doing too well with the sweets on an empty stomach. The bus showed up around 7:45, and we started to get our stuff put on. Nate put our two huge bags and Gabi’s bed under the bus. As we were ready to climb on board, the guy asked to see our passports. So we looked in the bag we had put them in last night, and they weren’t there. And then we looked in the other bag we had put them in, and they weren’t there. Then we looked in our two other bags, and they weren’t there. So Nate got the bags off the bus, we looked in them, and they weren’t there. Everyone was staring at us as we pulled everything out of all our bags, and Gabi just really wanted to get on the bus. So we pulled all of our stuff back into the station, and put it in a corner, had one more good look through, and then decided we must have left them at Anderson’s house. So Shelley built a little fort around herself in the corner with all of our luggage, sat Gabi on her lap, and Nate went to call Andre, to ask him to have his mother walk over to the apartment and look for it. When I came back, we remembered that when we were doing stuff on the computer the night before, we had taken the wallet with the passports out to get something that was in there. And we had left it by the computer. By now it was 8:15, and our bus had left. Luckily the ticket guy said we could change the tickets for the 12:15 bus with no problem. So it was decided that I should take the two trains and a bus back to the apartment, while Shelley and Gabi sat in their fort. The ground was cold, the door nearby was drafty, Gabi fell asleep on her lap, but she soldiered it out, guarding our luggage and waiting for me to get back. I meanwhile had to find the two trains and bus, and luckily got to a train or bus just as it was leaving, so I didn’t have to wait around a lot. I got to apartment, and found the wallet just where we had left it.
Anderson offered to drive me back to the train station that was by his work, which was incredibly nice of him, and I made it back to the station by 10:30, a two hour round trip. I changed the tickets and we filled out the stuff with the info from our actual passports this time. Shelley was able to get up and get some feeling back in her legs, and warm up by walking around the station. We grabbed some lunch, and got on the bus with no further problems.
It must have been fate for us to take this bus, because we ended up sitting next to a woman and her 5 year old daughter. The little girl was adorable, with bright red hair, and fair skin, her father must be an Irishman. But she was Brazilian and super friendly, as was her mom. They shared their toys and food, and even had Gabi sit with them for a while. We had Gabi share her toys too, and the little girl really like her MagnaDoodle.
The busses in Brazil are the most popular way of getting around between cities, because they are cheap and really really nice. You can lay down in them farther than an airplane, there is lots of leg room, a fairly decent bathroom, and they also had leg rests. We even got to watch It Takes Two to Tango, and My Girl Two, both in English, with Portuguese subtitles. The ride was six hours long, and we when we got into Parati it was dark out, and we had no idea where we were going to stay. Luckily, there was a super friendly guy just waiting for people like us. He had a stack of brochures from Pousadas of every sort and every price, all of which probably give him a commission for bringing us there. We had read about one place on the way down, so we said we wanted to look at that place and one of his places. We walked a good six or seven blocks with our seven bags, and of course Gabi wanted to be held. The whole time we were walking to the place we had read about, the guy was saying how we would look at it, and see how uncomfortable it was, and how the other place would be so much better and nicer and so on and so forth.
We got to the first place and talked to the owner, and he said he was full. But when he realized that we wanted to stay a full week, he said he had a room. It was kind of small, with just a bed and not a lot of room, and it was a little dirty. He tried to convince us to stay but we decided to look at the other place first, he must have known how far away the other place was because he offered to watch our bags in his office while we walked to look, we took him up on it and brought our bag with our passports and money with us. After walking all through town and over the river we got to the second place and it was much nicer, it included breakfast and had two beds(which we were grateful for because we really didn’t want to deal with the pee filled bed so late) and we talked him down R$10 a day(in the end it saves us 35 US dollars in total). Oh no actually the owner said our guy would cut his commission so he could cut it down that much, we were grateful and said we would stay. But now the conundrum was getting our bags here, no way in HE double hockey sticks we were going to haul them all the way here. Just so happens the pousada owner has a son who owns a taxi and drove Nate and our guy back to get the bags, the owner picked up the cab bill and we tipped our nice friendly guy, who was already earning a commission off us, 5 reais(hey-eyes). (Still Monday but now in the evening, seems like a long day? It was!)
We got back to the apartment and had to take showers, because Dre was taking us to his cousin’s birthday party, at his Aunt’s house. We had a really good time at the party. Ella was really excited for all the desserts that were there, and it was fun talking to Andre’s family. They were all super nice, and surprised that I could speak Portuguese and everyone who knew a little bit of English spoke what the could to us. Gabi played with Gu a lot, and with some of Dre’s younger cousins, one of whom was just like Shelley’s cousin Jasmine. After we had sung “Parabens pra Voce” the Portuguese version of “Happy Birthday”, we got to eat the cake, which was a coconut cake. Gabi had so much of that and of Brigadeiro (a ball of dulce de leche with chocolate sprinkles) that she threw up. Then she wanted more, which we didn’t let her have. When we got back to the apartment it was time for bed and we watched a few tv shows in English.
On Sunday was the day the whole bread story happened, Nate got confused and thought it was Friday but it was Sunday. After we all had some breakfast we hung around the house and played and just relaxed until it was lunch time and we all went over to Titia’s house. They had made pasta, sauce with tuna and without tuna, salad, chicken, and fresh mango juice. We all ate a good lunch and Gu and Gabi played again. They both started jumping on the bed and were having a great time with Dre and his sister Adriana. We tried to get Gabi to take a nap but too much was going on so we took her to the park with Gu. They had lots of fun on the slide and teeter-totter. After the park we were ready for dinner so we went to get some authentic Brazilian pizza for the second time. Dre thought he was taking us to an all you can eat pizza joint which sounded great but when we got there, it was the wrong place, we decided to stay anyways. We ordered a pizza with half four cheese and half sausage. When the pizza arrived it was crazy, the sausage side had no cheese. It was crust with sausage, not the American sausage that comes on pizza more like a kielbasa sausage cut in big slices, covering every inch except the crust. And then the sausage was covered with a million little white onion rings all over it. The cheese side was a little more recognizable as pizza but it was still very different, the cheeses were very strong and there was a blue cheese on the pizza, I thought that was odd, plus when you order a four cheese pizza in the states you can’t really tell where one cheese ends and the other begins. You know it is well mixed, no, not on this pizza it was crazy you could see each cheese individually on the pizza. Ok enough about the pizza. So we ate and left, oh yeah Gabi was asleep on Nate and my lap all through dinner. So as we got ready to leave she woke up and asked are we going to get pizza, oops it was all gone!! On the way home we told her we would get her something to eat, but we also needed to get some more money before leaving Sao Paulo. Dre drove us all over creation looking for a Citibank ATM and on the way we ran into a road block with cops. One was stopping cars holding a hand gun at his chest ready to use it, and another had a rifle, luckily they waved us through and we didn’t even have to stop. Dre said maybe there was a bank robbery or something. So we finally got to the ATM, Citibank that is and got out cash. As Dre was driving us home we were kind of being followed by cops, they had their lights on but no siren and I said “Oh no, Dre we are being pulled over.” He said “They don’t do that in Brazil, people don’t get pulled over by cops on the road, they get tickets in the mail, from cameras on the street.” But he thought it odd they seemed to be following us. Because he was so concerned about it, he ended up driving in a complete circle trying to loose them and they still kept following us, finally we made a turn toward the house and they didn’t follow any more. It was a pretty exciting night all in all!
When we got home it was time to pack because this was to be our last night in Sao Paulo, we had decided we were going to Parati (pronounced Para-chee) in Rio de Janeiro state. It had been in contemplation the past few days if we wanted to head straight for Rio or go somewhere else. We thought Rio was a little too big and wanted to go somewhere we thought Gabi could be a little freer. In Sao Paulo it is such a big city (at least 17 million people, and as far as the eye can see) we felt she had to be glued to our side and didn’t want her to talk to loud because then it would be obvious we were foreigners. Parati is a little town(about 17,000) and on the coast so we decided this was ideal. We packed everything up and tried to lighten our load a little so we could travel better. Well let me say we are one bar of soap, one pack of wipes, a book and a jar of vitiams lighter, what a difference that made. We are still traveling with 2 huge backpacks, and two day packs, Gabi’s backpack, Gabi’s bed and my sea green ESPRIT beach bag straight from the 80’s. Oh yeah, we made a big decision to leave the stroller in Sao Paulo, which we still aren’t sure was a great idea in the end. Ok so to say the least it was a long night with little sleep and lots of packing. And after we finished packing we tried to take care of some stuff on the computer which kept us up even longer. And in all of this hubbub, Shelley forgot to put a diaper on Gabriella when she went to sleep, and of course she peed all over her Dora bed.
We woke up Monday morning at 5:30 with plans to take the 8am bus to Parati, and Anderson said he would drive us cutting out traveling on a bus and two trains. After dealing with the pee bed and dragging all of our stuff downstairs and cramming it into Anderson’s two door little car, we were on our way to Tiete (Chee-eh-tay) bus station. We got there at 7, bought two tickets for Parati, kids under six ride for free, and eat and stay for free at a lot of places, which is nice. We had photocopied our passports earlier, and used these to fill out our information on the tickets. We hauled our junk down stairs to the gate, and had some donuts and cheese bread for our breakfast. Gabi liked the donut so much she threw up. It was a sugar covered, chocolate stuffed donut, and she hasn’t been doing too well with the sweets on an empty stomach. The bus showed up around 7:45, and we started to get our stuff put on. Nate put our two huge bags and Gabi’s bed under the bus. As we were ready to climb on board, the guy asked to see our passports. So we looked in the bag we had put them in last night, and they weren’t there. And then we looked in the other bag we had put them in, and they weren’t there. Then we looked in our two other bags, and they weren’t there. So Nate got the bags off the bus, we looked in them, and they weren’t there. Everyone was staring at us as we pulled everything out of all our bags, and Gabi just really wanted to get on the bus. So we pulled all of our stuff back into the station, and put it in a corner, had one more good look through, and then decided we must have left them at Anderson’s house. So Shelley built a little fort around herself in the corner with all of our luggage, sat Gabi on her lap, and Nate went to call Andre, to ask him to have his mother walk over to the apartment and look for it. When I came back, we remembered that when we were doing stuff on the computer the night before, we had taken the wallet with the passports out to get something that was in there. And we had left it by the computer. By now it was 8:15, and our bus had left. Luckily the ticket guy said we could change the tickets for the 12:15 bus with no problem. So it was decided that I should take the two trains and a bus back to the apartment, while Shelley and Gabi sat in their fort. The ground was cold, the door nearby was drafty, Gabi fell asleep on her lap, but she soldiered it out, guarding our luggage and waiting for me to get back. I meanwhile had to find the two trains and bus, and luckily got to a train or bus just as it was leaving, so I didn’t have to wait around a lot. I got to apartment, and found the wallet just where we had left it.
Anderson offered to drive me back to the train station that was by his work, which was incredibly nice of him, and I made it back to the station by 10:30, a two hour round trip. I changed the tickets and we filled out the stuff with the info from our actual passports this time. Shelley was able to get up and get some feeling back in her legs, and warm up by walking around the station. We grabbed some lunch, and got on the bus with no further problems.
It must have been fate for us to take this bus, because we ended up sitting next to a woman and her 5 year old daughter. The little girl was adorable, with bright red hair, and fair skin, her father must be an Irishman. But she was Brazilian and super friendly, as was her mom. They shared their toys and food, and even had Gabi sit with them for a while. We had Gabi share her toys too, and the little girl really like her MagnaDoodle.
The busses in Brazil are the most popular way of getting around between cities, because they are cheap and really really nice. You can lay down in them farther than an airplane, there is lots of leg room, a fairly decent bathroom, and they also had leg rests. We even got to watch It Takes Two to Tango, and My Girl Two, both in English, with Portuguese subtitles. The ride was six hours long, and we when we got into Parati it was dark out, and we had no idea where we were going to stay. Luckily, there was a super friendly guy just waiting for people like us. He had a stack of brochures from Pousadas of every sort and every price, all of which probably give him a commission for bringing us there. We had read about one place on the way down, so we said we wanted to look at that place and one of his places. We walked a good six or seven blocks with our seven bags, and of course Gabi wanted to be held. The whole time we were walking to the place we had read about, the guy was saying how we would look at it, and see how uncomfortable it was, and how the other place would be so much better and nicer and so on and so forth.
We got to the first place and talked to the owner, and he said he was full. But when he realized that we wanted to stay a full week, he said he had a room. It was kind of small, with just a bed and not a lot of room, and it was a little dirty. He tried to convince us to stay but we decided to look at the other place first, he must have known how far away the other place was because he offered to watch our bags in his office while we walked to look, we took him up on it and brought our bag with our passports and money with us. After walking all through town and over the river we got to the second place and it was much nicer, it included breakfast and had two beds(which we were grateful for because we really didn’t want to deal with the pee filled bed so late) and we talked him down R$10 a day(in the end it saves us 35 US dollars in total). Oh no actually the owner said our guy would cut his commission so he could cut it down that much, we were grateful and said we would stay. But now the conundrum was getting our bags here, no way in HE double hockey sticks we were going to haul them all the way here. Just so happens the pousada owner has a son who owns a taxi and drove Nate and our guy back to get the bags, the owner picked up the cab bill and we tipped our nice friendly guy, who was already earning a commission off us, 5 reais(hey-eyes). (Still Monday but now in the evening, seems like a long day? It was!)
Well you still are not up to date but we will continue working on it, thanks for all the comments we really like hearing from everyone!!
2 comments:
That stroller cost a million dollars you better get it back before you leave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't even read the rest of the blog after I read that I had to comment immediately, so I might comment again after I read the rest of your post, by oh my god you guys that was a really nice stroller.
Que bom que voces acharam um lugar legal pra ficar em parati. Aproveitem!!!!
Beijos
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