Tip of the Day part 2

If you order your Mexican dinner in broken Spanish, you will receive two margaritas.  A huge improvement over the two dinners last week!

FYI - the mex food was quite delish!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is August 21st and my Mom's birthday.....HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Nothing much to post from today - twas a very lazy Sunday indeed.  

We'll be sure to celebrate the bday when I get back.... maybe with some shots of Cachaça!

XOXO

Around Sao Paulo with the Locals

On Saturday, 8/20, my Google teammates planned a "tourist day" around Sao Paulo to take me to some of the famous sites and their favorite spots.  While it was cold and raining all day, we managed to have a solid day of local flair.  


We hit up a fancy cafe to grab some pastries and coffee (cafe).  Coffee is huge here.  And incredibly good. I like a strong coffee back home in the US, and Brazil coffee does not disappoint.  In fact, most people drink espresso shots straight.  I haven't graduated to that yet, but I'm getting close!  Coffee is consumed all the time and is very social.  My favorite tradition is that every day, as soon as we finish lunch, everyone grabs a coffee and chats before going back to their desk.  It totally avoids the inevitable 2pm food coma.


After a quick bite, we headed over to the Pinacoteca do Estado.
(taken from Wikipedia):

The Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (Portuguese for "pinacotheca of the state of São Paulo") is one of the most important art museums in Brazil. It is housed in a 1900 building in Jardim da Luz, Downtown São Paulo, projected by Ramos de Azevedo and Domiziano Rossi to be the headquarters of the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts. It's the oldest art museum in São Paulo, founded on December 24, 1905, and established as a state museum since 1911.

After passing through a reform conducted by Paulo Mendes da Rocha in the 1990s, the museum became one of the most dynamic cultural institutions of the country, lining up with the international circuit of exhibitions, hosting cultural events and keeping an active bibliographic production. Pinacoteca also maintains a branch in Bom Retiro district, called Estação Pinacoteca, where it holds temporary exhibitions and the institution's documentation center.

The Pinacoteca has a wide-range collection of Brazilian art, mainly noted for its vast assemblage of 19th century paintings and sculptures, one of the largest in the country, as well as for a number of iconic Brazilian Modernist artworks. The collection also includes a department of works on paper, European paintings and sculptures from 19th century artists, decorative arts, etc.

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We also managed to have a little fun with the sculptures.... 

There was a beautiful park outside the museum.  Luckily the rain stopped long enough to walk around a bit.

Next, we walked down the Centro to the Mercado Municipal, which is akin to a huge farmer's market and flea market combined.  It was unbelievable the amount of different foods, candy, alcohol, trinkets, and people that flocked to this event.  

After taking in the sights of the market, we headed upstairs to the food court....and to Mortadela Brasil, famous for it's sky high mortadella sandwiches that are almost impossible to eat.  We managed just fine.

After chowing down and having a Chopp (local beer), we braved the market and tried all sorts of different fruits, olives, candy, everything.  Tasted & bought some Cachaça so I can make caipirinhas at home.

We headed to a few other local spots, before calling it quits due to the rain & cold.  Overall, an awesome day!

Colher de Pau - traditional Brazilian lunch

The very next day, after stuffing ourselves full of coxinha, my teammates took me out for a traditional Brazilian lunch at a place called Colher de Pau.  Everyone said that this is the place they go for family dinners, so I knew this was the spot.

I put all the ordering duties in the hands of my Google friends and wow, it was delicious.  Everything was done 'family style' and shared at the table.  We had a huge dish of cheesy rice & beans, dried meats, regular rice, curried cod, fried banana, and fresh fruit juices.   Fruit and fruit juice is big here....you can order it at almost every restaurant and we have a juice squeezing machine here in the office.  Aside from the juicing fruits, the tropical fruits are UNreal.  I have papaya and mango with every breakfast and it's so ripe and perfect.  Ok, I'm hungry just typing this post.

my plate - dried meats, cheesy bean rice, fried banana, curried cod, rice, juice

the spread...before

and after..dominated!

The Coxinha and The Caipirinha

There are two extremely delicious works of art here in Brazil that I've come to love: the coxinha and the caipirinha.


Coxinha (pronounced 'co-sheen-ya')

The Coxinha is a popular Brazilian snack, made from shredded chicken and spices (occasionally including Catupiry-style cheese),potato, and enclosed in wheat flour—they are then battered and deep fried. It is shaped to roughly resemble a chicken drumstick. Coxinha literally means "little thigh", and it is how chicken drumsticks are known in Brazil.

Let's just say, it's a teardrop shaped ball of fried heaven.  My Brazilian teammates eat these at happy hour while drinking, which provides quite the greasy base.  It's brilliant.  I've also encountered (i.e. devoured them) at all times of the day, including breakfast on occasion when my hotel had a bin-full at the buffet.

Caipirinha (pronounced cai-pea-rin-ya)

The Caipirinha is Brazil's national cocktail, made with cachaça (pronounced ka-sha-sa) (sugar cane rum), sugar and lime. Sometimes, they are made with fresh fruit juice.

These babies are S-T-R-O-N-G.  I had two in Rio and was feeling no pain.  They are refreshingly delicious and I've been trying them wherever I go, to taste all the different caipirinha recipes.  

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My teammates planned a happy hour outing on Thurs 8/18 to Veloso Bar, which they claimed served the best coxinha and caipirinhas in Brazil.  No joke, they were other-worldly.

I will be hitting the gym when I get home.  Enough said!

Portuguese isn't easy...

Tip of the day:  if you change your mind mid-order, while ordering dinner in broken Portuguese, you will get two dinners.

I asked for a to-go bag, to avoid any further embarrassment.  Until next time....

Adventures in Rio de Janeiro

[For full pics, click here]

Just got back from an amazing weekend trip to Rio de Janeiro.  I was planning to go later in my trip, but found out that this past Sunday was the Father's Day equivalent here, so it was the perfect time to get away.  It's a quick flight, only about 45 minutes, so it's like taking a trip to LA for the weekend....totally manageable.

Woke up at the crack of dawn (before dawn) to catch my 7am flight.  TAM Airlines is like the cousin of Southwest Air, with flights leaving every 30 mins or so.  The only downside is that it has negative legroom.  I've never been so cramped in the leg on a flight before:

Normally I wouldn't mind, but the guy and gal in front of me reclined the entire flight....including immediately after we landed, and had a makeout party the entire time.  The poor guy behind me was just as tall, so I didn't recline, for his benefit.  That meant that my face was about 10-12 inches away from said makeout party.

Once I made it to Rio, I was met by Matilde, my personal tour guide for the day.  I figured it would be the best and most efficient way to see as much of Rio as possible in a single day, by hiring a local.  She met me at the gate with a huge smile and a sign with my name on it "Jenica Smith".  I gave her the benefit of the doubt on the spelling :).  From the minute we met, I knew we'd have a blast together.  She was cracking jokes in the first 5 minutes and we were laughing the whole time.  We got to the parking lot and she couldn't remember where she parked the car.....which was a hysterical way to get things started.  We found the car and made our way to the city.  

Matilde had the right idea by driving directly up to one of the big monuments, to beat the crowds:  Christ the Redeemer.  The weather was absolutely perfect, which allowed for some incredible shots:

 

Once we made it down the hill, we went all over town, checking out some historical homes, the favelas (from afar), cathedrals, and many more.  One of my favorite spots was Escaderia Selaron: The Great Madness steps in Rio. The artist has been spending several years constructing this amazing staircase work of art using tiles he collects from around the world. He changes out the tiles as he travels and will be doing this for the rest of his life.  Snoop Dogg filmed his 'Beautiful' video here :)

 

After a nice lunch downtown, Matilde and I headed up to Sugarloaf Mountain, another huge tourist attraction that I was most excited for.  You ascend the peaks in a cable car, with 360 degree panoramic views of the entire city.  I was blown away and pretty speechless while up there.  It was insanely beautiful.

After a long 8-hour day of touring, Matilde dropped me off at my hotel on Ipanema Beach.  Upon checkin, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I got upgraded to oceanfront....and my room had 2 king beds.  Party time!  Too bad it's a 15 hour trip down, otherwise I would have called up my friends to come join me.....

 After a long nap, I managed to hoist myself out of bed and head down the street to a local outdoor steakhouse/pub, where apparently, they created and wrote the song "The Girl From Ipanema".  My tour guide told me to go there and swore that it was the place.  Once I got my dinner, the song was the last thing on my mind... look at this MEAT

After that long day, heavy dinner and a couple Brazilian caipirinhas, I was promptly knocked out cold.  

Woke up on Sunday to see that the wind had kicked in pretty hardcore, which made the beach a bit less desirable than it was on Saturday.  I was bound and determined to hit up the beach, no matter what, so I headed down there for a couple hours to get some sun.  It was so windy that not a single person had an umbrella open (you can see from my pics above that there were hundreds of them open on Saturday).  It was a total Speedo party down on the beach with the majority of the guys sporting some nice banana hammocks.  Vendors walked up and down the beach selling random food items and bikinis.  Standard, I guess.

Once the wind became a bit too strong, I headed back to the hotel and took a long walk down the beachwalk, all the way to Leblon.  They close half the street, so everyone is walking, biking, skateboarding, you name it... up and down the beach.  Once the weather turned a bit worse for the wear, I hopped in a cab to the airport, to attempt an earlier flight home.  My original flight was at 8:45pm, and I was going at 6, so not too shabby.

The lovely folks of TAM airlines put me on the next flight back to Sao Paulo, which was great.  I get my boarding pass, get on the plane......and lo and behold......Mr. and Mrs. Makeout Party were sitting IN MY ROW WITH ME.  Seriously, what are the odds?  These two canoodled their way back to Rio, while I patiently flipped through my magazine.  Sometimes, you just gotta roll with it.

Such an amazing weekend - I cannot wait to go back to Rio someday.  Perhaps in 2016 for the Olympic Games?  I think we can make that work.