Recife, Brasil...short but sweet.

Our next stop was Recife, Brasil. Everyone suggested, including Lonely Planet, to stay in the Olinda area because it was more laid back and artsy. As again, we arrived at night. Never ever a good idea to a place we've never been and a language we barely speak. But this was the first time we took the long distance bus during the day. It proved to be a shitty trip, like grey hound from sf to colorado but crowded like the 30 Stockton going through Chinatown. Lucky us, we had front seats where we see the most action and get zero naps in.

We ended up staying at D'Olinda Pousada. The sweetest part of this place was the free breakfast and the outrageous lunch (in a good way). The best was the breakfast cuz it wasn't just cheese and bread like we've been having EVERYDAY at all the other places. Finally, we had variety...and it was glorious. fruit, meat pies, eggs, sausages, and PIZZA. damn, all this for breakfast. crazy right.

The area of Olinda was amazing. They definitely have an unique artistic way of living. It was so fun walking around checking out the colorful houses, the graffiti art everywhere, and all the shops with their works. Most stores also had their giant puppets they use for Carnival. these bigger than life characters were surreal and somewhat cool and scary at the same time. And of course, like every city we've been to in Brasil, they claimed that Recife had the BEST carnival celebration. Its awesome because it shows how much pride they put into this yearly event.

HIGHLIGHT of Recife was def going to the Black Tuesday concert. After finding out from Josh that Recife was like number one murder capital of Brasil and walking through the ghetto at night looking for something called BLACK TUESDAY was def a highlight. Only because it proved all doubts wrong and turned out to be a successful and funfilled night. We found the concert in this enclosed square with a catherdal as the background. pretty sick. the concert had some hip hop (or as they call it in brasil, hippy hop), folklore, african drumming, the works. the crowd was mainly students and people who were there to smoke and chill.

But as written in the title, Recife was short but sweet. We scheduled out the rest of our trip in hopes to see a real soccer game back in Rio, so only 2 nights in Recife and moving on up the coast to Natal next.

Here's some pics of these puppets.





Here's a video of one dancing.

Recife, Brasil - Carnival Puppets from Anson Ho on Vimeo.