Brasilia

After the touristy Igassu falls, it was time to go to a far less visited destination: the capital of Brazil. It is a pretty crazy idea to build a capital in the 1950`s out of nowhere. The city is divided around 2 main axes which give it the shape of a plane or a bow. People leave in districts called quadras. Every quadra hosts 3000 people, a school, a supermarket..That is to say, there is not such a thing as a city center and the distances are huge. This city designed in the 50`s is made for our 4 wheels friends:car. Therefore all the main avenues are empty and lifeless.. Not what we would expect from Brazil! But we more or less knew what to expect and we found it fascinating: Traveling around the city made us feel like an old science fiction movie. Especially that the city has many very cool buildings designed by Niemeyer and his peer architects.
Shame on us (in the middle of the Copenhaguen submit) we rented a car..In such a city designed for cars, it was definetely the best option. And Google Translate has been a great friend when we rented the car as no one in the renting car company could speak English: I hope the contract in Portugese we signed didn´t include some dodgy conditions (such as give a kidney or you first new born..).



On our last night, we adventured ourselves in a quadra: the streets were pretty dark and didn´t look to inviting but once we were in the center of the quadra, we discovered signs of life:) A lighted shopping street and very animated bars where we had some ´choppes` and some Brazilian fingerfood.
Very suprising fact is that waiters are tend to `tip` us. If the bill is 42 Reals and we give 50, they sometimes give us back 10 (btw 2 reals equal to 0,80 euros). We are probably so nice consumers that they can´t but tip.