Bom Dia (Good Morning) from Brasil (Day 6 in Brasil)

On our penultimate day in Brasil we started, as usual, at the padaria. This morning Nancy had a multigrain roll and her orange and papays juice. (The juicer at home may have to come out of storage.) This morning Fred had errands to run so he dropped Nancy and Mike at the huge park in Sao Paulo. Mike describes it as SP's Central Park. We walked, watching people jog, run, and bike. There's exercise equipment for people to use. The refreshment carts have, in addition to Gatorade, soda, and juice, coconuts so they can serve fresh coconut milk. At the lake we saw white and black swans, geese, a crane, a cormorant, and vultures (similar to the turkey vultures back home). There was a bird that looked similar to a robin, but wasn't. After walking, we found a shady bench and Nancy finished grading her students' papers (and there's a photo to prove it!)

After Fred picked us up, we were on our way to USP, University of Sao Paulo (pronounced oohs-pee) to visit with another one of Mike's colleagues. He ran the conference that Mike attended last August (and I got to meet him last year in San Francisco at the AGU conference). We had lunch at the faculty dining room -- which is in the middle of a "jungle" (see the photos!) It was a very nice buffet and a nice visit.

Our next stop did not make Mike happy, it was at a shopping mall (those who know Mike know that he hates malls), but a very, very upscale mall. This meant it was very quiet and calm. We found a big bookstore and Mike had fun finding some DVDs of Brasilian performers he enjoys. Nancy  bought a copy of T.S. Eliot's book of cats/gatos (on which the musical Cats is based) -- the front is in Portuguese, the back in English (to try and learn some Portuguese).. We went to the upper level of the mall to take photos of the city. Then across the bridge over the river and back to the apartment. Cris came home from a long day of teaching and meetings. Around 8:30 pm we walked several blocks to a small restaurant to meet friends for dinner. Nancy tried one of the famous dishes of Brasil, baccala (salted cod). The restaurant makes it twelve different ways -- we only tried one. Mike shared a dish with Cris that is typical of northeastern Brasil and included rice, meat, and cubes of plantain.

Day 6 photos