@ all our friends: We are doing fine - don´t worry. We just don´t find time to use the internet as I guessed ;-)!!!
Tonight we will take the night bus back to Salvador and will have one night and two full days to take part in Salvador carnival before flying out to Recife and spend five more days of carnival there :-)!!!
Today we had a wonderful day horse-riding through beautiful landscapes and rivers. So now our bums hurt a lot and we will enjoy a massage before boarding the bus...
Big hugs from Cigdem and Silke
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Monday, 9 February 2009
Sao Paulo day 1 & day 2
Day 2
Today we decided to visit the daily fruit, vegetable and other specialities market: Mercado Municipal.
We got out of the metro at Sao Bento station. The first step out on the street was so different than the day before. The streets were so crowded, everybody was in a good mood and smiling and the first shop we realized was Carnival heaven :-)!!! We tried on everything interesting we could find... Take a look!
Then we went on to the market. There were millions of market stalls with really nice fruits, olives, cheese, fish...
One guy offered us to try some fruit: some typical Columbian fruit, mango, a kind of pear, something called Brazilian viagra and some more. Afterwards he surely wanted to sell us some fruit and also to be Cigdem´s boyfriend ;-) But the fruit and Cigdem were too expensive!!!
On the way to our next destination - the Japanese quarter we encountered a street full of kombi vans. Silke is so happy in this city because nearly every fifth car is a kombi.
In the Japanese quarter we were searching for a place for some manicure, massage and Sushi. We found the manicure first (@ Eva & Laura: the Brazilian flag will follow for carnival ;-)!). Unfortunately they couldn´t trim our bodies for Ipanema beach within half an hour. We couldn´t find a Sushi place as they were closed until the evening. Instead we had some Japanese noodles. First two portions with chicken because as we have experienced different times already the conversation in English & Brazilian is quite difficult!
Now we finished our first blog posts and will go out :-)
Take care, we will go on exploring Brazil for all of you!!!
Day 1
First day out in ´Megalopolis´
We got up early and had breakfast with lots of fruits (Cigdem just in liquid form). Very excited we left the hostel for our first excursion in the city. The weather hot and humid we first passed some sub streets and we popped into a little street market where all kinds of fruits and vegetables were offered. Everything was nicely build up to little towers. Cigdem couldn´t resist so she had to buy a cheese pastry, yummy yummy very good and Silke went for the Coconut drink.
We were on our way to ´Placa Republica´ to start our historic town tour when suddenly 3 little guys stopped us behind a bus stop asking for cigarette (we thought). When I took out my ciggis some how it turned out that these guys are not really after a cigarette - one of the guys held my arm and was saying something that we couldn´t understand. But it was very obvious what they wanted. The scene ended that he was holding my arm and I was holding his arm and he gave up at some point and took the ciggi and we just walked away from them without turning our heads back. I should better stop smoking:-) We kept on doing our sightseeing.
We did a 3-4 hours walk through the city which was quiet cool because the streets were not so crowded because it was Sunday. We saw a lot of interesting places and beautiful architecture. First we went to Estaçao da Luz a railway station that was build in 1901 as a symbol of industrial progress. At Praca de Se (heart of downtown) you bump into this huge beautiful Catedral Metropolitana the fusion of Neo Gothic and Renaissance. We went inside and listened a while to singing of the people who were at the mass. The sun was dramatically shining through the coloured big windows. A moment of peace.
It´s good to get some peace in this huge carpet of sky scrapers, it feels there is no beginning and no end. Watching out for the horizont you realize it´s a stoney one. I like the old buildings here they seem to have a soul.
Our tour ended with a stop at ´Bar Brahma´ with a veggi snack and ´chopp´ (beer).
In the afternoon we went to Instituto Butanta, an institute for snake pharmacology. They host and melk over 8000 snakes. We saw this one Anaconda that obviously had lunch, becuase it´s long body (maybe 6-7meters) had all over bumps looked really weired. There was also this albino snake (yellow and white), which I really really liked. Some other ugly creatures like frogs and soiders can be found in the institute.
We planned to go to Vila Madalene for dinner and drinks Ana who we met at the plane recommended us this place. For reasons of safety and reasons we still not sure about we did not take a map, enough money and credit cards. Maybe we should rename our blog from beach bunnies to chaos bunnies ;-)?!
But we somehow managed to find the place we were looking for but unfortunatley it was already closed.
Another recommendation led us to a street with lots of restaurants and bars. We decided to go for fish. Very good decision. The menue card showed us a price we were not really excepting. We had just enough money to pay our bill. The next problem was that we didn´t know how to get back to the metro station we came from. The waiter was kind recommended highly not to walk because it´s to dangerous at night. So he accompanied us to a bus stop that a normal person could never ever find. Just to let you know this guy or almost no one here speaks English. It´s terrible to have a language barriere. It somehow works out to speak with hands and feets but it´s very embarassing...
We met this girl at the bus stop she was also waiting for us and se could speak English and so we were telling her our storie that we kind of lost, we don´t know for sure if the bus is going where we have to go and that we had 8 Reais to get home again (Single bus ticket 2.40). And taking a taxi was not in our budget! The bus needed to go straight to our place....We were lucky the bus came after 1 hour and the girl talked to the bus driver and made sure he lets us out at the right place. Cool cool. Thanks!
We arrived in the middle of the night at Parca republica and we were pretty scared to walk the 5 mins to our Hostel. If you are in a poor situation you just hold hands and walk with fast steps ... and you start praying that you can make it back home safe.
It was a heavy first day we were tired, made some mistakes, a lot of new impressions ... The best of it: we learnt, tomorrow we will make it better:-)
Today we decided to visit the daily fruit, vegetable and other specialities market: Mercado Municipal.
We got out of the metro at Sao Bento station. The first step out on the street was so different than the day before. The streets were so crowded, everybody was in a good mood and smiling and the first shop we realized was Carnival heaven :-)!!! We tried on everything interesting we could find... Take a look!
Then we went on to the market. There were millions of market stalls with really nice fruits, olives, cheese, fish...
One guy offered us to try some fruit: some typical Columbian fruit, mango, a kind of pear, something called Brazilian viagra and some more. Afterwards he surely wanted to sell us some fruit and also to be Cigdem´s boyfriend ;-) But the fruit and Cigdem were too expensive!!!
On the way to our next destination - the Japanese quarter we encountered a street full of kombi vans. Silke is so happy in this city because nearly every fifth car is a kombi.
In the Japanese quarter we were searching for a place for some manicure, massage and Sushi. We found the manicure first (@ Eva & Laura: the Brazilian flag will follow for carnival ;-)!). Unfortunately they couldn´t trim our bodies for Ipanema beach within half an hour. We couldn´t find a Sushi place as they were closed until the evening. Instead we had some Japanese noodles. First two portions with chicken because as we have experienced different times already the conversation in English & Brazilian is quite difficult!
Now we finished our first blog posts and will go out :-)
Take care, we will go on exploring Brazil for all of you!!!
Day 1
First day out in ´Megalopolis´
We got up early and had breakfast with lots of fruits (Cigdem just in liquid form). Very excited we left the hostel for our first excursion in the city. The weather hot and humid we first passed some sub streets and we popped into a little street market where all kinds of fruits and vegetables were offered. Everything was nicely build up to little towers. Cigdem couldn´t resist so she had to buy a cheese pastry, yummy yummy very good and Silke went for the Coconut drink.
We were on our way to ´Placa Republica´ to start our historic town tour when suddenly 3 little guys stopped us behind a bus stop asking for cigarette (we thought). When I took out my ciggis some how it turned out that these guys are not really after a cigarette - one of the guys held my arm and was saying something that we couldn´t understand. But it was very obvious what they wanted. The scene ended that he was holding my arm and I was holding his arm and he gave up at some point and took the ciggi and we just walked away from them without turning our heads back. I should better stop smoking:-) We kept on doing our sightseeing.
We did a 3-4 hours walk through the city which was quiet cool because the streets were not so crowded because it was Sunday. We saw a lot of interesting places and beautiful architecture. First we went to Estaçao da Luz a railway station that was build in 1901 as a symbol of industrial progress. At Praca de Se (heart of downtown) you bump into this huge beautiful Catedral Metropolitana the fusion of Neo Gothic and Renaissance. We went inside and listened a while to singing of the people who were at the mass. The sun was dramatically shining through the coloured big windows. A moment of peace.
It´s good to get some peace in this huge carpet of sky scrapers, it feels there is no beginning and no end. Watching out for the horizont you realize it´s a stoney one. I like the old buildings here they seem to have a soul.
Our tour ended with a stop at ´Bar Brahma´ with a veggi snack and ´chopp´ (beer).
In the afternoon we went to Instituto Butanta, an institute for snake pharmacology. They host and melk over 8000 snakes. We saw this one Anaconda that obviously had lunch, becuase it´s long body (maybe 6-7meters) had all over bumps looked really weired. There was also this albino snake (yellow and white), which I really really liked. Some other ugly creatures like frogs and soiders can be found in the institute.
We planned to go to Vila Madalene for dinner and drinks Ana who we met at the plane recommended us this place. For reasons of safety and reasons we still not sure about we did not take a map, enough money and credit cards. Maybe we should rename our blog from beach bunnies to chaos bunnies ;-)?!
But we somehow managed to find the place we were looking for but unfortunatley it was already closed.
Another recommendation led us to a street with lots of restaurants and bars. We decided to go for fish. Very good decision. The menue card showed us a price we were not really excepting. We had just enough money to pay our bill. The next problem was that we didn´t know how to get back to the metro station we came from. The waiter was kind recommended highly not to walk because it´s to dangerous at night. So he accompanied us to a bus stop that a normal person could never ever find. Just to let you know this guy or almost no one here speaks English. It´s terrible to have a language barriere. It somehow works out to speak with hands and feets but it´s very embarassing...
We met this girl at the bus stop she was also waiting for us and se could speak English and so we were telling her our storie that we kind of lost, we don´t know for sure if the bus is going where we have to go and that we had 8 Reais to get home again (Single bus ticket 2.40). And taking a taxi was not in our budget! The bus needed to go straight to our place....We were lucky the bus came after 1 hour and the girl talked to the bus driver and made sure he lets us out at the right place. Cool cool. Thanks!
We arrived in the middle of the night at Parca republica and we were pretty scared to walk the 5 mins to our Hostel. If you are in a poor situation you just hold hands and walk with fast steps ... and you start praying that you can make it back home safe.
It was a heavy first day we were tired, made some mistakes, a lot of new impressions ... The best of it: we learnt, tomorrow we will make it better:-)
KLM flight & first journey in Braz public transport
KLM - Pain in the ass - or what customer service is like in the UK
Sometimes I really think torture should be a legal process to free your own pain.
It was technically not possible to check in via internet and change our seat numbers so that we could sit together on the flight from Amsterdam to Sao Paulo.
The next step was calling the customer service of KLM in London. Heyyy this was pretty easy, the lady on the phone confirmed our seats for the 11,5 hours flight. Thanks!
Heathrow Terminal 4 at 4 o´clock should be renamed into ghost hall, I have never seen such a crap place before in my life.
Wiping my passport through the machine gave me a big suprise...the seat numbers were still the same as before my call with the customer service centre. arrrggghhhh. Ok, no probs, get into the looooong queue and speak to the KLM lady at the check in desk.
After explaining my problem Miss KLM was not very helpful, just was saying with a face of a bull dog that she can not do anything about it, that she haven´t been there when I spoke to the service centre on the phone and that she can´t take charge of this and that this is definitley not her fault! The next 20 mins playing ping-pong without any results her supervisor had to be called. The same shit like before, no one can help no one feels responsible no one cares ...
Need to go to the gate know, hectic ... running to the security check and the realizing that I don´t have my hat aeeehhhh sorry the hut Julia borrowed me ...uppppsss back to Miss KLM (she deformed her face when she saw me again) and asked her if she had seen my hat the response was a disapproval.
For not making things worse as they are I better catch my flight know ...
Amsterdam: My flight had delay so I had to run to the connecting gate with dried out lungs I finally found the right gate and Silke. Thank God! We talked to another KLM stuff member and how funny it wasn´t a problem to get a seat where we could sit together. Perfect, so simple and quick. Thank you Holland! We boarded and found out that we are sitting in the last row just next to the toilets not the best one during a long flight. Our faces turned down again....but neither Silke nor me had the energy to say something. I needed some minutes to come down on earth again...Next round, please! Talked to the (gay) steward and told him the same story again I felt like an old broken record in a endless loop...But Dutch people are so kind he just organised us a new place and the end of the story is that everyone was happy and ready to go.
Arriving at Sao Paulo Guarulhos Airport we first went to the tourist information and asked for transport possibilities to the city. That was quite easy though the guy first supposed to take a cab. But this was too boring for us ;-)! We wanted a real start and Brazilian experience and decided for the cheaper version: taking a public bus. And this was a real experience as on the way there was a huge thunderstorm. The lightning was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo big - it was unbelievable. In town we had to change to a metro, found an Australian backpacker who did the same thing so that we could walk with our large Australian buddy :-)! After the metro a little walk with our backpacks and we finally arrived at Sao Paulo Hostel (http://www.hostelsaopaulo.com.br/) in midtown.
We had a quick shower, then we went upstairs to the seventh floor. There was a party with live music on the rooftop. We had some patata brava and a beer but afterwards we were nearly fell asleep on the chair (we both hadn´t slept the night from Friday on Saturday). We decided to go to bed and had our first Brazilian night :-)
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