Curitiba

Monday, Feb. 28

Breakfast was a pleasant surprise today. I had to drag myself out of bed before it was too late to get there. The notice in the room called it a continental breakfast, so I figured it would be the usual bread, butter, marmalade, coffee, and artificial orange juice. Instead, I found a great breakfast buffet. There was warm scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, salami, two kinds of cheeses, four kinds of cereal including a good granola, four kinds of fresh fruit (watermelon, honeydew melon, papaya, and pineapple), a freshly;made fruit cocktail, three kinds of cake (chocolate, cornflour pound cake, and coconut cake), coffee, tea, and probably some things I am missing. I had ham and eggs with two croissants, granola topped by fruit salad with coconut yogurt as the milk, orange juice, pineapple juice, coffee, coconut cake, and a slice of each of the fruits. Umm!

I just wandered today. I did it while looking for a cyber cafe. I found at least 10 tatoo parlors and 25 copy centers before I found a single over-priced cyber cafe! Maybe this town is so rich that everyone has a home computer. Anther thing that could be a factor is that most backpacker places are starting to have a computer for the use of their guests. Anyway, I know where I can go at least to fine one place now.

I walked as far as the government center northeast of town. It is where the city and state have their massive buildings. I was there when thousands of people had spilled out onto the streets for lunch. There were many good places to eat. It was frustrating, because I was still full from breakfast.

I returned to the hotel at 2:30. I had planned to go back out, but I was so comfortable that I stayed inside. I washed some clothes in my washroom sink using the bar of laundry soap I have from India. (They use laundry bar soap instead of laundry powder there, because the powder isn´t effective when they wash at the riverside which is wear most laundry is done in India.) Then I finished reading Oxygen by Andrew Miller. It is good. I gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 4. (That´s what I also gave Life of Pi. I have only given 4 stars to less than a handful of books I have read.)

Tuesday, Mar. 1

I had almost the same for breakfast today as yesterday. Instead of coconut cake, I had banana cake.

It is cooler--almost too cool for shorts and t-shirt. When the sun is out, it is fine, but clouds keep returning.

Today has been museum day. I started with the Contemporary Art Museum which is about 2 blocks from my hotel. It had some interesting paintings, but nothing special. Then I went to the Paranense, the museum for the state. It had some wonderful Indian exhibits of masks, feathered body adornments, spears, etc. It was a huge museum that also had exhibitis of old maps, relics from a ship that sank in battle, furniture from immigrants who settled here, etc.

The best of the museums was the Niemeyer. It was designed by the architect that Brazilians love and has an exhibit of his works in it. But mainly it is a HUGE art museum. It is out away from the Center. I had trouble getting there, because the map the tourist office gives is difficult to follow. Beyond the Center, it leaves off many streets. Also, the orientation of streets outside the Center is not exactly as shown on the map. That caused me to get on an outgoing street that wasn´t the one I needed. When I realized my error, I started taking streets that would head me back toward where I needed to be. None of the cross streets was ever one I knew from the map should lead me toward the museum. Finally, I found myself at the edge of town with sheep fields around me. That´s the edge of a city of 2 million people, so I had walked a long way! I headed back into town taking streets that would lead toward where I thought the museum should be. Finally, I passed a street that was supposed to lead directly to the museum according to the map, and it did.

The museum has as striking design. The majority of the exhibit space is in a huge rectangular building. But in front of that is "The Eye." Setting on top of a rectangular column is a free-form structure the front and back of which actually does take the shape of what can been seen of an eye between the eyelids. Unfortunately, that portion of the structure was not open today. (Is it ever?) But there was a huge exhibit all behind it that had a wonderfully large exhibit of the giant ceramic sculptures of Brannard (?) There were also exhibits of photographs, paintings, sculptures, etc., of other artists in galleries within this huge building also. The AMOUNT of exhibit space was just phenominal. Any museum would be excited to have such large galleries available to them.

http://artes-curitiba.com/museu-oscar-niemeyer.htm

By the time I made it back to town, it was 4:00 p.m. I stopped at a sidewalk cafe near my hotel and had a chicken sandwich for a late lunch/early dinner. Of course, it was far more than it sounds as are most sandwiches here. On a large bun was a juicy filet of chicken, cheese, bacon, tomato, lettuce, fried egg, and mayonnaise. It came with fries, and I ordered a one-liter bottle of beer. I ate and then sat at the table relaxing and finishing the beer.

This morning, I revised my exchange chart I carry with me. I noticed on the news that $1 is now just 2.59 Rais. That´s quite a drop since I created my chart in December at the rates then. For instance, 20 Rais now cost $7.72 vs. $7.40 in December. My hotel room is costing me $1.75 more per night at the new rates than it would have cost in December. It doesn´t sound like a lot, but expenses are low here, so a little change represents quite a change. My sandwich and fries at lunch would have been paid for with that daily increase in the hotel room costs.

Walking: 32,146 steps (25,269 aerobic steps), 1303 calories, 21.85 km (13 miles)