July 19th – 20th 2017
It’s a long day driving. It should be about 9 hours. But always seems to turn into 11 hours, even when I’m speeding. We leave Foz super early but the sun is still setting as we pull into Curitiba. This time around we’re staying in a small apartment hotel right in the centre of the city. It’s much better located then the Ibis, and much nicer too, for a smaller price, but as we get into the city, finding the parking lot which is a few blocks away from the actual hotel proves very difficult, with us doing many loops on one way streets trying to find it. Oh well at least the sunset coming into town is beautiful.
Once we do finally find parking we check in to the hotel, after some calls to Renata (brazil takes child protection seriously) and are welcomed to a gorgeous two bedroom apartment with a small balcony overlooking a little plaza in central Curitiba. We snap some photos of the last glimmering glow of the sunlight now faded below the horizon and the Brazilian life going on below us. Curitiba is a fairly big city, without too much to do for tourism, but it’s the perfect stop off on the way back to Sao Paulo and does have some things to do. At any rate we take a short walk to the mall where we grab some food court staples and then see a movie before walking back to the apartment and getting a good nights sleep. We will have the next morning and early afternoon to explore Curitiba before heading back home to Sao Paulo.
The next morning we wake up fairly early, eat a nice included breakfast in the hotel, drag all our stuff a few blocks to the car and head out of the center of town towards the botanical gardens of Curitiba, which are generally seen as one of the main attractions in town. It’s a beautiful sprawling park filled with flowers, birds and tons of interesting plants from around the world, the most striking feature being the huge, oddly shaped greenhouse building, which is of course what we walk towards immediately.
Inside the greenhouse it’s extra warm and the plants take a more tropical turn, up on the second level of the greenhouse we also get great views of the city too, which is an added bonus. It’s not the boys favourite stop of the trip but we enjoy eachothers company and pass the camera around for everyone to grab some shots.
Eventually we leave the heat of the greenhouse behind and follow another trail towards the more forested part of the park, stopping to rest on various benches and watching for any interesting wildlife. We eventually get to the lake which is surrounded by various species of birds which the boys enjoy trying to get the best photos of. It’s very nice traveling with them, because while I do love taking pictures, sometimes I’d rather just live in the moment and be where I am. But of course I want to have nice pictures for the blog. With the boys with me I can hand off the camera to either one of them and know they will cature the moment, while I enjoy it. We lounge by the lake for a while before deciding to leave the gardens and head to our last stop in Curitiba, a very well reviewed thai and indian restaurant:Tuk-Tuk Comida
The food is good, though not up to Canadian standards and less so to Indian and Thai standards, but still the prices are fair and we enjoy a nice early lunch before hopping in the car and heading out of Curitiba towards Sao Paulo. We’ve got firm designs to stop at the same roadside barbecue place we did on the way down with some of the best sausage I’ve ever tried. Tragically when we get there they find they are closed as a restaurant having finished up the lunch rush, and we’d have to wait about three hours for dinner. We’re already going to be getting home late, so we don’t wait and hit the road again. We’re treated to one more spectacular sunset on the way home, and then it’s a few hours of dark driving through some crazy roads to get home, but we make it there safely. The first trip of many with the boys at my side. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t without huge problems, but it was a lot of fun, and I’m excited for the next one. \
