On Thursday morning, we visited Villa Belmira Estadio Urbano Caldeira, home to Brazil’s best soccer team, Santos Futbol Club, as well as the greatest soccer player in history, Pele. It was nice to see the “Memorial das Conquistas,” the Santos Futbol Club’s museum/trophy hall.
After the visit to the soccer museum, we visited the Coffee Exchange. Not exactly my cup of tea (get it?), but I made the best of it and took a few pictures.
From the coffee exchange, we made our way to a trolley station, where we took a guided tour of Santos. One of the first things we saw was the locals celebrating Corpus Christi.
Formerly City Hall, this building, victim of a huge fire, is being restored to become the National Pele museum.
A few more pictures from the tour:
A few Rotarians came over for lunch. The maid made a delicious fejoada, a famous Brazilian dish consisting of beef, pork, and black beans. Before dinner, she brought out a huge batch of caipirinha, the national cocktail. Caipirinha traditionally consists of a few pieces of lime, sugar, and cachaza, the Brazilian liquor. This batch was exceptionally strong.
For dinner, we went out to a pizzeria named Kokimbo, which is actually named after the Chilean state, Coquimbo. There, we made our own pizzas. The Brazilians have been telling us that they eat the most pizza in the entire world. It’s hard for me to dispute this because we’ve had pizza about five or six times since we’ve been here. Here’s my take on Brazilian pizza: they eat the most, but they definitely don’t make the best. They make it with weird combinations of toppings, like egg and tuna, or broccoli and garlic, even chocolate ice cream. WTF? Anyway, I decided to make a rather traditional pizza, in the American sense, at least: pepperoni, tomato, mozzarella, parmesan, and garlic.
I thought it was pretty good, and so did the owner. He told me he was going to put it on the menu, but he was probably bullshitting.
I was happy to get home in time to watch the Laker game live on ESPN Brasil. I was even happier when they whooped some Celtic ass. Yay-yeeah.
Friday was another fairly relaxed day. We went to Praia Grande (praia means beach) and observed the city-wide camera monitoring system at city hall. This was pretty cool.
We asked our guide what the craziest thing he had ever seen was. Instead of describing it, he actually showed us the archived footage. A group of inebriated tourists hit the beach at about 4:30 AM. The tourists decided to remove their clothing. Being that it was 2 guys and 2 girls, I think some freaky shit was about to go down. But instead of waiting for the fireworks, the cops came in and spoiled the show. The tourists were arrested. The guide proceeded to show us footage of a few robberies, car accidents, drug deals, and a guy smoking a joint on the beach. The joint smoker got arrested and went to jail for two years. If we had this in LA, (do we?) imagine how many arrests we’d have on Venice beach! You can see a few of the live cams here: http://www.praiagrande.sp.gov.br/PraiaGrande/index-.asp?cd_pagina=77&principal=290
Then we rode along the beach, a several-mile long stretch of coastline.
We stopped at this plaza, where they had gigantic metal statues of important, peace-loving historical figures.
Nelson Mandela
Jesus Christ
The Virgin Mary
Pope John Paul II
And Mother Teresa (apparently, the artist didn’t like her too much)
If me and Frank go down in history, there’s no way they’ll have enough metal to make replicas of our humongous cabezotas.
Then, it was off to an art museum. A few pics:
At night, we had a presentation at the local Rotary Club, Praia Grande Forte Itaipu. We had a blast at this meeting, certainly the most fun we’ve had presenting during our stay.
This wasn’t an actual meeting, as the holiday was in the way. However, the President, Mariangela, and her husband, former President, invited their entire family, which included a whole bunch of kids.
Then, it was time to eat. And, we ate A LOT.
The lady in the red helped me improve my Portuguese big time. She never stopped talking to me in Portuguse, and by night’s end, I was able to understand her when she told me that 1) her sister in law (who was a few feet away from me) never got married and should’ve gone to a convent and 2) that she had triple bypass surgery. Seeing how they eat so much red meat, I’m not really surprised. =/
Today (Saturday), we didn’t do much besides shop. We visited a local Brazilian gift shop, and the local mall, which was nicer than any mall in Los Angeles not located in Century City. A few pics:
Tomorrow, its back to Sao Paulo for the day where we’ll be visiting Morumbi Stadium, to watch the Sao Paulo Futbol Club play. Then, we’re moving to Guarulha for the upcoming week. I’ll check in soon. Chau!
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