Sunny Brazil: Ouro Preto and Lavras Novas

Ok, so I know this trip happened in 2008 or 2009 but it’s worth remembering (specially cause I found old pics on the computer recently). Well, this post is about Ouro Preto and Lavas Novas (a small village located in the district of Ouro Preto), both located in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

We started our journey in Belo Horizonte (BH) and drove around 120Km to Lavras Novas to spend a couple of days in a very romantic way. The trip takes place in the asphalt most of the way, but as the village is really small (around 1.500 inhabitants) and quite hidden in between the mountains, the last kilometres were driven on a dirt road. There was a quite weird wood bridge on the way and when you pass the car over it, you have the impression it will fall apart due to the noise. The landscape is pretty and with many huge rocks along the road, which makes one scared when he thinks that it might have rolled from up there!  

Road to Lavras Novas

 Lavras Novas

We chose a special Inn called Palavras Novas which is decorated in a rustic style, something quite typical in the State of Minas Gerais. As it was in the middle of the week, the Inn was almost empty and we ended up enjoying our day in the pool by ourselves watching the (fast) sunset. Sunsets in Brazil are quite a disappointment for Europeans, as it takes only a few minutes until the sun sets down completely and it’s then suddenly dark. We had then a tea offered by the Inn with all sorts of cakes, breads and cookies. The evening was great, nice food, no noise, fresh and pure air, no city lights could be seen out of the window, only the stars... So, more romantic than that, forget about it! To tell you the truth, our stay at the Inn was so delightful, and as we didn’t have much time during the next day, we didn’t get to see much of the village or the region’s famous waterfalls. So on the next morning we left Lavras Novas and put ourselves on the way to Ouro Preto, only 17Km away.

At the Inn

Ouro Preto (in English, Black Gold) is a former colonial mining town located in the so called “Serra do Espinhaço mountains and designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO because of its baroque architecture. It was founded at the end of the 17th century and originally called Vila Rica ("rich village"). It was the focal point of the gold rush of Brazil's golden age in the 18th century. It was also the scenario for an unsuccessful Brazilian Independence Movement, as the country was a colony of Portugal at the time. It was the capital of Minas Gerais from 1720 until 1897, when the needs of government outgrew this town in the valley and the state government was moved to the new, planned city of Belo Horizonte, as I mentioned on a previous post.

Ouro Preto

There’s a big university in Ouro Preto and for this reason, there are over 10.000 students living there and they make life in town something else. There are several fraternity houses called "repúblicas", each one of them with their sets of rules, traditions, and of course, great parties during religious holidays and Carnival. 

Carnival in Ouro Preto

But now back to our trip. We parked the car at the main Square (Praça Tiradentes) and decided to walk around it and get to see the main attractions, which include several churches richly decorated with gold, sculptures and paintings; the main museum (Museu da Inconfidência); the entrance of a Gold Mine; saw a jeweller shaping the beautiful stones; visted the old theatre, the former House of Gold rendering and coin-making (Casa dos Contos) and the beautiful houses of the “Rua Direita” (street)  Of course, to visit all those places, we had to go up and down the many hills, which made Sven sweet like a waterfall – as you can totally imagine!

Museu da Inconfidência and Praça Tiradentes (Square)

Igreja de São Francisco de Assis

Sven in the Balcony of the "Casa dos Contos"

In the end, we got tired of climbing the hills to see the remaining one thousand of churches and decided to return to BH. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post! For more information about Ouro Preto, please visit: http://ouropreto.travel/en or watch the video:

Sunny Brazil: Belo Horizonte - Pampulha

Pampulha is a region located in the northern part of Belo Horizonte with an artificial lagoon with the same name (Lagoa da Pampulha) The lagoon and the beautiful buildings in the area are one of the most important tourist attractions in BH.   

Pampulha Lagoon

The famous architect Oscar Niemeyer was the chosen person to make the project for a set of buildings in 1940 and the result was so good that it soon became a reference for the Modern Brazilian Architecture (He was also the responsible one for the planning of Brasilia, Brazil’s capital). The set of buildings include the São Francisco de Assis Church, the Museum of Modern Art (former Casino), the Ball House and the Yacht Club. The beautiful gardens, paintings and the sculptures add a unique touch to the whole set.

São Francisco de Assis Church

                                  

Museum of Modern Art

Ball House ("Casa do Baile")

Yacht Club

Around the Lagoon there are also some other important landmarks such as the Soccer Stadium (Estádio Governador Magalhães Pinto) known as “Mineirão” and the Stadium/Concert Hall (Estadio Jornalista Felipe Drummond) known as “Mineirinho”, Very important observation: the “Mineirão” is being refurbished to host some of the World Cup 2014 soccer games. An important note, so you can already start to plan your holidays here around this time!  

Mineirinho (small, on the left) and Mineirão (the big one)

Driving the car, running or riding the bike around the Lagoon, the person also get to see the Zoo and the Guanabara Park. Ah, talking about running, there’s a famous annual running competition called “Volta Internacional da Pampulha” and people come from all around the world to compete. I almost forgot to say: when you're walking quietly around the lagoon, be aware of the alligator, it lives in the lagoon for a while and appears out of nowhere from time to time; not to mention the capybaras that also love to make an exhibition!

      

         Capybaras (Wasserschweine)                                      Alligator

Every New Year’s Eve there are many people gathered at the Pampulha Lagoon to celebrate and to see the fireworks! Lots of them stand up on the roof terrace of their fancy homes to watch it and welcome the brand new year.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading! ‘Till next post!

Map of the Pampulha Lagoon Area

Mineirinho, Mineirão,  São Francisco de Assis Church and the Lagoon

Sunny Brazil: Belo Horizonte

Belo Horizonte (or Schöne Aussicht in German, or Beautiful Horizon in English) is the capital of the Minas Gerais state in Brazil. As it’s a quite big name and we’re lazy, we normally just called it “BH”. It's my beloved city, where I grew up and lived for the longest time (Mitza here)! 

Well, BH is a young city; it was planned and built in 1897 to be the capital of the state. Over 2,5 million people live in here. The also called “big BH” includes other cities in the surrounding area and the population then rises to 4,8 million inhabitants. UNO considers BH the city with the best quality of life in the entire Latin America. We belo-horizontinos are usually quite happy living here, but we also say that the only problem is the lack of ocean, otherwise it would be just perfect. When compared to other big cities, such as London or São Paulo, BH is still “small”, because life here is still quieter, the people are not so stressed, not so indifferent and also, the distances are not as problematic as in London that it takes you forever to go from one point to the other.

As you can see in the map bellow, BH is located in the Southeast part of Brazil. Although it seems like it’s quite close to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, those cities are already far away: 440 Km and 580 Km. You have to think that Brazil is probably the size of Europe and my state (Minas Gerais) is probably the size of Germany. Therefore, it’s always a longer trip when we want to travel to the coast!

Enough with boring numbers! What are we famous for? Mountains, food, hospitality (yes, we are very friendly people!) and accent (yes, we do speak like we’re singing!).

The topography of the entire city is mainly with mountains, some parts with higher hills than others. A little bit hard to ride a bike, depending where you want to go! The Serra do Curral (mountains) dominates the view in almost every post card. From up there, BH can be seen as a concrete jungle with hundreds of tall buildings, probably more than in the entire Germany. They exist thanks to the less and less space to live in the city center and the search for a more peaceful living without robbers.

Belo Horizonte and Serra do Curral

The food not only in BH, but in Minas Gerais is very unique, and by “food” I include here the habits that come with it, such as drinking coffee or beer. The pão de queijo (cheese breads, for those who have visited us and I made this while living in Germany), cheese, several types of cakes, cookies, food with lots of meat and beans (like the famous feijão tropeiro) which Sven normally looks and makes a bad face not being brave enough to try it. We also have all sorts of food made with corn: sweet corn cake, pamonha, curau, polenta etc.They’re all very yammy! (I can already imagine my husband’s bad face reading about it)! J Especially outside of BH, the hostess have the habits of offering a cup of coffee with cheese for the visitors; and in the really small villages, some people might get a bit offended if the visitor refuses to eat and drink what they offer. So make sure to eat and drink as much as you can when you’re travelling around here!

                                  Pão de Queijo                                                         Feijão Tropeiro

                                       

       Bolo de Milho                                                         Polenta Frita

                                     

Pamonha

  Curau 

 Also, as we don’t have an ocean and “nothing better to do”, we go to pubs quite regularly to drink beer and eat Brazilian tapas (tira-gosto) or barbecue (churrasco) with our friends. That is a very strong tradition! BH is very known for its bars: it’s the city with the highest number of pubs per citizen than any other big city in the country. Because of that, it was created a few years ago a yearly pub competition called Comida di Buteco, in which a certain ingredient it’s given and the pubs compete between themselves with their “tira-gosto” that include that ingredient. People then vote for the best pub.

All in all, BH is a green city with trees everywhere (something I really miss living in London…) of the famous Pampulha area (next post) and its modern architecture style buildings (some of Oscar Niemeyer’s most famous projects were built in here) of pubs that bring friends together, of beautiful and friendly people that welcome all its visitors and try to make their holidays the best possible ones!! Below, some more pictures of Belo Horizonte:

With Lilian and Daniel up in the mountains and the city in the back

Liberty Square

Also at the Liberty Square

Pope Square and the city in the back

Central Metro Station

Parque Municipal

Praça Sete de Setembro

Savassi Area

Pampulha Lake and São Francisco de Assis Church (a preview of the next post)

Sunday Market at the Afonso Pena Avenue ("Feira Hippie")

To all our friends, I hope you enjoyed this post and that I could make you curious enough to schedule a trip to Belo Horizonte soon!!

Queues

As Mitza was telling me again and again that it is NOT okay to spend my weekends in front of the TV playing Xbox (And because it is the last weekend this exhibition is on), I decided to go out and visit the Royal Academy of Arts, to see Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935. Checked the price and opening hours before I left and completely ignored the button "Order your tickets here" - Fail!

The Academy is located between Green Park and Picadilly station, so even on weekends quite busy. So when I entered I saw first the model of a tower that was planned to build in St. Petersburg (The original would have been 400m high and would have moved!), but also the queue in front of the ticket desk.

So as a man of quick decisions, I jumped on the 88 to have a look at Westminster Abbey - but they were already closed... So I just took a picture for Mitza as a proof that I really have been there and that I am not just making up a story to get her off my back...

Then I remembered that I read the day before that there is a new restaurant opening in Canary Wharf that sounded promising. (Sorry folks, in the end I am always stuck with food...) Quick check on my mobile (How could mankind survive 40.000 years without mobile internet - and sorry Chris that I ever made fun of you in regards this topic) revealed that they have already two restaurants in London, one in the City (closed on Saturdays) and one in Marylbone, Westminster. I know, you are already courious to find out why I am making such a fuzz about it, I am talking about the Relais de Venise - anyone a clue what this means? It was founded 1959 in Paris and has branches in London and NewYork now. Their concept is to provide you with no choice - or as I called it "With Sven's dream when he is going out with Mitza" - Sorry Honey! You get a fixed menue for £21 consisting of a starter salad with walnuts (and a dressing that was a little bit mustardy for my taste - if that word even exists) and a few slices of baguette, which I hope it was not transported in some French guy's armpit. The main dish then is a steak with their secret sauce (delivered in two tranches to get  it to the table hot) and french fries that are imported from France, so logistical valuable food. But this approach must be procurement's dream!

So back on the 88, a short walked and I was there at 18:10 (Official opening hour 18:30). But lucky for me I had something to do: I could go into the queue that was already around the corner. But luckily I got in with the first group of guests. I do not want to bore you, so if you want to see how it looks like just have a look at their page. The meat was great, really soft, also the fries were good.

Reasons it will not go there again:

• As the Guardian stated too: I am feeling to old to queue to get some food
• When I want to eat a steak I want a big piece of meat and not twice several thin slices
• I want to have the sauce separate and not poured over my meat, even if it is some secret recipe from France - although the guys beside almost licked their plates clean...
• I don't want to feel pressured to leave because the next customers are already waiting in the door

Below a picture of the queue when I left. Obviously I could not take one before, because I would have lost my place in it!

Some more observations: Londoner seem to go to restaurants regardless the age of their kids (The suckling beside me seemed to be still moist...) and there is nothing better to keep a toddler quiet than an electronic device like an tablet or Nintendo DS. It seems I am getting old...