Sunday, January 19 - Recife, Brazil

 Our tour today was 4 hours of the highlights of Recife including a trip to the nearby city of Olinda.

Once again, the graffiti and garbage everywhere are a real put-off. Many buildings were closed, but was that because it was Sunday, or are they permanently closed? It's hard to tell.

We drove for about 20 minutes, then had to change to smaller vans that held about 15 people to get up into the center of Olinda and the market square.  We visited a pretty cathedral and a small shopping area.

This coconut water was cold and very refreshing on this hot day.

Lovely little umbrellas overhead gave us some shade while we waited for the souvenir collectors.

Market square with the cathedral in the background

Then it was back into the smaller bus back down the hill to the larger bus which took us to another square with the church of St. Francis of Assisi.  This had a room with a gorgeous painted ceiling.

We saw sidewalks like these in Portugal, which makes sense since Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese.

The Governor's Palace

The guide called this a Bilbao tree which is a couple of hundred years old

Pretty tilework in the Franciscan church courtyard

Franciscan church ceiling

Lots of gold everywhere.  Seemed a little over the top to me.

The Dutch owned Brazil for a while and here is their influence.

In memory of the  Franciscan martyrs

If you look closely at the men with the spears, you'll see their faces have been scratched out.  Some nun did that.  I guess it's OK to deface art because you object to something if you're a nun.

We saw 4 VW Beetles driving together along our route.  Perhaps a rally of VW owners?

There's a nice stretch of beaches in Recife, but most people don't actually go into the water because it can be rough unless you're a surfer.

This was an OK tour.  Our guide wasn't the best, but he was enthusiastic.  It was very hot, but we had our scarves that are soaked in water and stay wet for hours to keep us a little cooler.  We got back to the ship around 2:15 and headed straight up to the buffet to get cool and eat.  Then just relaxed in the cabin.

Bob and Bo were still on their 8-hour tour, so it was just Roger and us for Trivia.  Another team that also only had 3 asked us to join them.  We ended up with 13/15 for 3 points.  Roger and I couldn't convince them that an elephant is the only terrestrial mammal that cannot jump.  They thought it was a bat!  But Iceland is the country that builds its roads around boulders to avoid the elves.

Dinner for two at Compass Rose as we wanted to be back in time for sibling Zoom at 9:00 pm, a weekly event.  The wifi has been very good so we were optimistic it would work.  And it turns out that it worked very well.