Day 60: Petropolis, Brazil

We walked around the city all day today and spent a while at the Crystal Palace. It started pouring (hurricaning may be a better description) so we sat inside and waited for it to calm down a bit. The Crystal Palace is a huge clear and blue glass building with a nice little garden area all around it. It´s free to get in and there´s nothing inside it but a small felt stage area against the back wall.

Inside Crystal Palace during torrential downpour!

Afterward we went to one of the monstrous churches and admired the decorations in and out.

 (Note: Regardless of your personal relgious feelings, churchs are very important to some people and it´s very rude to flash pictures all over the place some people are trying to actually worship or pray in their own local church. Just be courteous to your fellow humans!)

View inside the church

There´s a gas station/fruit store/juice place (all lumped into one building) just about 5 minutes walk from the church and there are delicious natural juices for only a couple of dollars per pitcher, which is about enough for 2 1/2 glasses per person. It´s literally just a big package of strawberries or a couple fresh mangos or your fruit of choices blended with ice. So good!!

We also found a movie theater! We went to see Australia for $3 each! It was a great movie and we were so excited to get to watch a whole movie in English! Afterward we went back downtown to check out the last night of Carnival. It was pretty much the same as last evening but I think the audience was even less enthusiatic than last night! We skipped out after 2 short parades down to a great little diner called Toni´s for some wicked awesome burgers and beers. Brazil doesn´t do just any ol´burger though. They take the idea and make it fatal–and more delicious! (Actually you can get just a regular cheesebuger but where´s the fun in that?) Saben´s choice of death was a bacon cheeseburger with not even one little leaf of lettuce in sight and Lin´s poison of choice was (get ready for this one!) an egg-bacon-cheeseburger! Of course, no vegetables would´ve done any good at all so no one ever bothered to even consider putting any on these sandwichs which suited us just fine. Surprising as it sounds, the “eggy“ burger was actually quite good!