We started the week by travelling from ugly Foz do Iguacu to Curitiba and what a redemption it was. Most of the tourist would have skipped this city and headed down south to the beach areas around Florianopolis (which was also our original plan) but because of a (invaluable) recommendation we decided to see this 3 million people city that featured in the CNN Future Cities as the modern, innovative and environentally friendly place. It is also very good connection to Ilha do Mel.
Curitiba turned out to be lovely place to spend a day; not very touristy but very interesting. The city and its major attractions are quite spread so here we behaved like good tourists and used the open top hop-in-hop-out bus to get around so we did not use its famous network and diverse fleet of public buses. (After we left Curitiba we read in the news that the Chinese announced that they plan to build the biggest bus in the word, claim that Curitiba refuted)
At least half of the stops of the tourist bus were at the memorials to various groups of immigrants: Italians, Spanish, Arabs, German, Ukrainian and yes Polish, too! The Polish site was in the John Paul II Park. Interestingly enough it was not a monument but 4 wooden village houses with the traditional polish interiors. We popped into one of them and were ready to head back to the bus when one of the maintenance ladies stopped us and said that we did not visited the most important house that was visited by John Paul II during his visit to Curitiba. She was really upset that we were about to skip it (I bet she was almost ready to drag us into it) so we had no choice but to go see it too. We had another obstacle on the way back to the bus: little restaurant called Krakowiak, where we had barszcz, pierogi & bigos for lunch, rather unexpected culinary encounter in this part of the world. Needless to say after spending so much time at the site of polish memorial we skipped all the other ones.
Curitiba & its architecture
The major architectural attraction in Curitiba is eye-shaped Modern Art Museum designed by Oscar Niemeyer (like almost all Brazil but no wonder; he is now 100 years old and apparently still working!). It’s hard to say if I liked it or not but certainly it is a bold and unique design. Given shortage of time, I thought we’d only see it from outside and move on but again we ended up inside, where we took a look at the Goya exhibition and surprisingly very interesting photo exhibition of Lithuanian photographer presenting life in Lithuania during communism. Another architectural gem is the Opera de Arame, a see-through iron and glass construction set in the greenery of a hilly park; sort of blending itself into the green space. Truly unique! It did not seem to have an extensive programme of events, at least when we were there. Shame… Maybe not the architectural wonder but a central shopping mall converted from the old train station was quite impressive too.
Couritiba’s major tourist attraction is the train ride through the Atlantic forest of Serra Verde. The train ride starts in Curitiba and on the week days go to Morretes, a little town in the middle of the mountains and on weekends it goes to Paranagua, a coastal town with boat connections to Ilha do Mel. Some tourists, as we discovered, used the train just as a day trip to Morretes and back same day to Curitiba (because there is nothing to do in Morretes). For us it was part of the journey to Ilha do Mel, and what a journey it was. The views of the Serra were spectacular and some of the bridges that we cross quite scary when you looked out too far out the window.
Ilha do Mel (Honey Island) was our first encounter with the Brazilian beaches and we were wowed! Getting there is not easy though. It took us all day to get there from Curitiba, starting with the train to Morretes, bus to Paranagua and the happy boat ride to island with the islanders coming back from shopping. We guessed they were spending the money made during high season. March is already end of high season in Brazil so we and a handful of other tourists were among islanders demonstrating their shopping results. The boat is the only way of getting to the island, there is no ferry so there are no cars on the island at all. The local transport is the bicycle (though seemed rather hard to pedal through the sandy pathways) and wheel barrows and man-push carts for transporting larger cargo or lazy tourists suitcases. The island itself is just beaches around every corner; you can walk 5 minutes to the closest beach or if you feel like it get strolling for an hour to reach more remote spots. For us there was no need to look far for remoteness because there were so few tourists around except for Saturday were the number grew 100 fold. Still there was more than enough ‘beach space’ so the island did not feel crowded at all. If you do not feel like spending all day at the beach, there is a lighthouse, old Portugeese fort and a cave to visit and there are lots of opportunities for bird watching (which seems to become my new travel hobby).
The only bad news from Ilha do Mel is that I got a cold, not bad achievement in the tropics :-) I was suffering and thought that the best remedy would be a drink with honey and lemon and to my surprise none of the mercados on the island had any honey in stock. Finally, in one of the cafés we found waffles with honey so I asked if they could make me a honey lemon drink. The waitress proudly explained that their honey is really wonderful because it comes from Amazonas!
I am not sure where the name of the island comes from given its lack of honey, but it really does not matter. It is wonderful place! It was only our first Brazilian beach experience, more to come… I have to think of some new ways of desrcibing the beaches before the blog gets to boring!
Curitiba turned out to be lovely place to spend a day; not very touristy but very interesting. The city and its major attractions are quite spread so here we behaved like good tourists and used the open top hop-in-hop-out bus to get around so we did not use its famous network and diverse fleet of public buses. (After we left Curitiba we read in the news that the Chinese announced that they plan to build the biggest bus in the word, claim that Curitiba refuted)Curitiba & its tribute to the (polish) immigrants
At least half of the stops of the tourist bus were at the memorials to various groups of immigrants: Italians, Spanish, Arabs, German, Ukrainian and yes Polish, too! The Polish site was in the John Paul II Park. Interestingly enough it was not a monument but 4 wooden village houses with the traditional polish interiors. We popped into one of them and were ready to head back to the bus when one of the maintenance ladies stopped us and said that we did not visited the most important house that was visited by John Paul II during his visit to Curitiba. She was really upset that we were about to skip it (I bet she was almost ready to drag us into it) so we had no choice but to go see it too. We had another obstacle on the way back to the bus: little restaurant called Krakowiak, where we had barszcz, pierogi & bigos for lunch, rather unexpected culinary encounter in this part of the world. Needless to say after spending so much time at the site of polish memorial we skipped all the other ones. Curitiba & its architecture
The major architectural attraction in Curitiba is eye-shaped Modern Art Museum designed by Oscar Niemeyer (like almost all Brazil but no wonder; he is now 100 years old and apparently still working!). It’s hard to say if I liked it or not but certainly it is a bold and unique design. Given shortage of time, I thought we’d only see it from outside and move on but again we ended up inside, where we took a look at the Goya exhibition and surprisingly very interesting photo exhibition of Lithuanian photographer presenting life in Lithuania during communism. Another architectural gem is the Opera de Arame, a see-through iron and glass construction set in the greenery of a hilly park; sort of blending itself into the green space. Truly unique! It did not seem to have an extensive programme of events, at least when we were there. Shame… Maybe not the architectural wonder but a central shopping mall converted from the old train station was quite impressive too. Curitiba & Trem da Serra Verde
Couritiba’s major tourist attraction is the train ride through the Atlantic forest of Serra Verde. The train ride starts in Curitiba and on the week days go to Morretes, a little town in the middle of the mountains and on weekends it goes to Paranagua, a coastal town with boat connections to Ilha do Mel. Some tourists, as we discovered, used the train just as a day trip to Morretes and back same day to Curitiba (because there is nothing to do in Morretes). For us it was part of the journey to Ilha do Mel, and what a journey it was. The views of the Serra were spectacular and some of the bridges that we cross quite scary when you looked out too far out the window. Ilha do Mel & the honey
Ilha do Mel (Honey Island) was our first encounter with the Brazilian beaches and we were wowed! Getting there is not easy though. It took us all day to get there from Curitiba, starting with the train to Morretes, bus to Paranagua and the happy boat ride to island with the islanders coming back from shopping. We guessed they were spending the money made during high season. March is already end of high season in Brazil so we and a handful of other tourists were among islanders demonstrating their shopping results. The boat is the only way of getting to the island, there is no ferry so there are no cars on the island at all. The local transport is the bicycle (though seemed rather hard to pedal through the sandy pathways) and wheel barrows and man-push carts for transporting larger cargo or lazy tourists suitcases. The island itself is just beaches around every corner; you can walk 5 minutes to the closest beach or if you feel like it get strolling for an hour to reach more remote spots. For us there was no need to look far for remoteness because there were so few tourists around except for Saturday were the number grew 100 fold. Still there was more than enough ‘beach space’ so the island did not feel crowded at all. If you do not feel like spending all day at the beach, there is a lighthouse, old Portugeese fort and a cave to visit and there are lots of opportunities for bird watching (which seems to become my new travel hobby). The only bad news from Ilha do Mel is that I got a cold, not bad achievement in the tropics :-) I was suffering and thought that the best remedy would be a drink with honey and lemon and to my surprise none of the mercados on the island had any honey in stock. Finally, in one of the cafés we found waffles with honey so I asked if they could make me a honey lemon drink. The waitress proudly explained that their honey is really wonderful because it comes from Amazonas!
I am not sure where the name of the island comes from given its lack of honey, but it really does not matter. It is wonderful place! It was only our first Brazilian beach experience, more to come… I have to think of some new ways of desrcibing the beaches before the blog gets to boring!
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