Day 2 - after a good night sleep

When they dropped me off the evening before, the guys - Manuel, Lotario and Ryan - told me about the market in São Francisco on Sundays. So off I go. It is a huge market, with food stands, clothes, shoes, things of great utility or not, home-made stuff, art of several kinds... and people all over the place, in and around the market, people walking, talking, playing, eating those fantastic diep-fried pastelaria - tried one myself... Heavy! I still need to work on the appreciation of those recipes.

The market in São Francisco

People on the Praca JoãnCandido, enjoying their Sunday in many different

Praca Joãn Candido, I get up onto the little hilly parcky thingy, up to a little blue house - very pretty in pale blue colours, with white carvings and vegetal features around the windows, doors and on the upper floor facade. Apparently it is an Art Nouveau belvedere from beginning of the 20th century, which also had hosted the first radio programme of Paraná and an astronomy observatorium. And on the other side a couple of Indians playing on their pan flute and other instruments, which you see in every city of the world. But as tourist of second day in Curitiba, I found them cheerful and entertaining, and appreciated the intermezzo in my tour.

The little blue Art Nouveau belvedere

Indian street music

On I go - the Linhea Turismo is a bus tour that will take me to all the turist attractions worth visiting in the city. Most important of all, it takes me to the outskirts where the parques and bosques are to be found, those I have heard of and studied previously. It will give me a more general impression and picture of the city. It is a 42km tour with hop-on-and-off stops. For me those were the Botanical gardens, the museum of Oscar Niemeyer and the Parque Barigui. The ticket allowed more but at some point it was just so freezing cold - Frio da porra! as I was told - that I just sat in the bus registering the comments, taking a couple of pictures and longing for warmer days where I'll take up the tour again, maybe with some visitors.

1: who said Brazil was hot? - 2: in the pavillon of the Botanical Gardens

The Botanical gardens are an interesting place: flowers, trees and all kind of vegetation from Brasil and South America are exhibited there. The lake hides some huge fishes jumping up after flies in a huge splash, of which reveals more water than fish, while the turtles move on slowly popping up their heads from time to time. From the botanical garden building, the view over the city is terrific: the skyscrapers emerge out off the green maze of the bosques.

View over Curitiba from the botanical garden

The museum of Oscar Niemeyer is quite a sight. This eye throning in the middle gives the uneasy feeling of 'Big Brother is watching you'. The different levels - entrances and exits - are linked by curved ramps, which might remind some of the Corbusier's work on the university buildings of the Carpenter Center of Visual Arts in the States. The entrance is downstairs at the pillar level - the museum tour takes you then up and down via slopes in the big volume of exhibition halls. Then when you are done enjoying the art exhibition, the visitor is taken through an indoor square dedicated to the work of Niemeyer, before leading him through a cyber-space tunnel and up into the eye (sounds very 'Lord of the Rings' doesn't it?). The eye is a huge room, you can wonder around, glaze, meditate...whatever you feel like. But then you just walk down again, out via the ramp and on to next visit.

The eye of the Oscar Niemeyer museum

Walking to the eye tower - looks like a cyber space tunnel, don't you think?

The bus took us passed the circular theatre - an old old cultural monument -, the Centro Civico, the Bosque Papa João Paulo II - dedicated to the Polish immigrants and inaugurated after a visit of the pope -, the different parques from the North East with all the different memorials and hommages -to the German immigrants, the Ukranian, the Italian at Santa Felicidade... Fascinating mix of cultures and expressions is found with all those immigrants from all over the world! The contrasts and various impression are enormous. And then of course, driving through those landscapes, you discover the social contrasts expressed through the settlements of condominios, gatted communities and poor quarters lying just next to each other, separated by a wall, an electric fence or both.

Memorial Ucraniano

Views of Santa Felicidade, the 'Italian district'

The sum feeling of the day is really there, in the huge contrasts that inhabit this city!

Knowing that the bus stopped at Parque Barigui and that my new friends and acquaintances were having some ultimate freesbee going there - that was my last stop of the day. The freesbee was most welcome as I was freezing to the bones and my toes were like ice-cubes. Fun thing the ultimate freesbee. Clearly there is some practice to do on my side, but I really enjoyed it! So fun! And fun as well to meet more people, new people.

The evening ended at the same adress, with cooking - three course dinner, yay! - music - conversations and live performance, soooo cool! - and a chill, relaxed, happy feeling. It is always so delightful and constructive to meet such great people. Sometimes a bit crazy but immensely charming! I must as well point out how helpful those guys have been to me - very touching.

Thanks to them, I have a place to stay, people to hang out with, a Brasilian phone number and good memories from the start on :-)