Curitiba

On the agenda today was exploring as much of the downtown core of Curitiba as possible as this is our only full day here. We had to get to the train station first though to buy our train ticket to Morretes, which is on the way to our next stop, Illa do Mel. With that task completed, we found a tourist information both outside the bus/train station and the lady was quite helpful. She pointed us to a little market across the street, which can be described as a smaller version of Granville Island market back home. There were many stands with fresh fruit and vegetables as well as bulk nuts and candies. Walking around all this delicious looking food made us start feeling hungry. We noticed there was an eating area on the mezzanine so we wandered up there and found a buffet for $9.50R each. The selection was great with hot foods, and a salad bar. We loaded up on the buffet and ended up having an incredible meal. My favourite was the rice and beans.

After our excellent value for dollar meal, we head off to visit Curitiba's Botanical Garden. This place was well worth the visit. By this time the sun was shining and we walked around the well manicured gardens admiring all the flowers. There was a glass dome at one end of the garden that housed a bunch of different fauna. This place is definitely worth a visit if in Curitiba and best of all it's free. It's only a short bus ride away from the downtown core.

Once we were done at the gardens, we took the bus back and walked around the downtown core. There is a very long pedestrian street with shops lining the street called Rue das Flores. As we were walking along we stumbled across a street market where we saw homemade crafts and embroidery items being sold as well as various types of foods. Still full from lunch we skipped on purchasing anything. One thing Curitiba has plenty of is places to shop. The buildings lining the street were very colourful with great architectural design.

Something that I have found quite interesting in both Sao Paulo and Curitiba is that the sidewalks are made up of various types of rocks and bricks. They are also very uneven so you really at times need to watch where you're going, especially in the rain as the sidewalks can become very slippery. The local women, more so in Sao Paulo than Curitiba, also like to wear heeled shoes. I've been trying to figure out how they manage to walk around with twisting an ankle on these sidewalks. I guess it just comes natural to them or something.

Curitiba was founded in 1693 as a gold-mining camp. The population is about 2 million, considerably smaller than Sao Paulo. An interesting fact I read about Curitiba is that they recycle 2/3 of all refuse. That's pretty cool.