The Bridge I Fell in Love With In Brasilia (1 August, 2014 - Goiana, Brazil)

1 August, 2014 - Goiana, Brazil, 1:12pm

Lunch was very good; salad, rice, garlicky beans and salmon cooked with capers.  It was a pretty delicious and satisfying meal, considering I am 98% sure that I am still drunk from last night – but I will get to that.

Our first full day in Brazil, we spent seeing everything in the capital city, Brasilia.  We started off at the top of the radio tower that is right by/in the heart of the city, which was nice so we could get an overview of the city and see where we would all be going.  The next few hours included a whirl-wind of architecture in the city that was built for the sole purpose of being the capital of the country. From an engineering standpoint, this fascinates me. The city first became an idea in the 1800’s when Dom Bosco had a dream that a city would be built between the latitudes of 15° and 20°, and that there would be many riches – a “milk and honey” kind of thing.

The city was built from nothing, literally nothing, in the 1950’s and had its opening in the 1960’s. Now it is a bustling city that houses congress, several other government buildings, and amazing architecture; including the JK bridge, named for the architect and mastermind behind the actual creation of the city. He was also the president of the country, went to medical school and did a lot of really cool stuff.  But that isn’t why I love the bridge. I love the bridge because of the design….

4:55pm

She is really keeping us busy! There is so much to see here! I am only back at the house now because I was starting to feel sick from partying too much last night…but more on that later, back to my bridge in Brasilia.  The design is something like this:

Profile and Plan view sketches from my journal

Me posing with the bridge. 

JK bridge on the right and some of Brasilia on the left

JK bridge as seen from the restaurant at night

It is white. Apparently it is designed to look like a stone skipping across the water. I love it.  If I had stayed a civil engineer, I would probably design things with that kind of whimsy. Why make a basic bridge when you can make one that looks like is skipping across water? Plus, the math looks like it would be really fun – they should use it in statics and strength of materials classes, it would have made me more likely to actually do my homework in those classes….

But anyway, that was probably my favorite thing to see in Brasilia. We also saw the cathedral that is famous for its architecture, and looks something like this:

Catedral de Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida

Inside of Catedral de Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida

Close to the cathedral was the cultural center, which was a dome with some pretty sweet ramps coming and out of it. Inside was a bunch of art, which was cool to see.  

We went to their congressional building that on the roof had this:

Congressional Building, on the right is a bowl to "collect" the voices of the people, and on the left is an inverted "bowl", to pour the voices into the ears of congress. 

 This design has significance because the bowl is to represent the voices and words of the people of the country being collected.  The dome is the roof of the of the room that the congress actually meets in and it is a dome to represent the flipping over of the bowl into congress; the voices of the people going into congress. I thought that was a cool idea. I don’t know enough about Brazilian politics to know if that is being carried out, but it is still a nice sentiment. 

At sunset, we went to a park that is a memorial for Dom Bosco (the one that had a dream about the city).  The park is on the other side of the lake and overlooks the city. The sun set behind the city and as I sipped fresh coconut water, I couldn’t help but think how wonderful of an ending it was to our day in Brasilia, which I was soon to find out was not over just yet. 

Us ladies watching the sunset over the city and drinking fresh coconut water

We met up with Natalia’s uncle while we were at the park and he suggested that we take a trip up to the digital TV tower which is on a hill on the outskirts of the city.  By the time we got there, everything was closed, but we did get some great views of the city. And I got some great pictures with the tower.  J

This is how you pose with a tower, right?

By this time, it was time for dinner and we decided to go to a restaurant that has very traditional Brazilian food, served buffet-style and charged per kilo.  It was soooo good!  The foods that I tried that were among my favorites there included roasted eggplant, the fried banana (always a favorite of mine) and a dish that I don’t remember the name of, but it is almost like a risotto.  Henrique (Natalia’s uncle) was saying that it was a traditional dish of the people that the restaurant was modeled after. I will have to ask Natalia for the name when they all get back.

Delicious Brazilian food and drinks!

At this point, we were pretty tired, so went back to the hotel.  We had discussed going to an Irish Pub with Natalia’s friend that we met with at lunch (at an Outback no less…Brazil is a melting pot too! Australian, Irish, German and of course, Portuguese and African), but it didn’t work out. Instead I watched TV with my parents to at least listen to the language.  The first five channels were soccer, one channel had a sketch comedy show that I could not follow, and we ended up watching a show that was a talk show of some kind where the hosts were in drag and they had a dating game component that consisted of seeing how well the guys could unhook the girls’ bra – without looking. Never a dull moment in Brazil. With that, I took a shower and went to bed.

The next day (July 31^st) was mainly a travel day from Brasilia to Goiana, even though it is only about a two hour drive. We laid low the rest of the day, which was nice, considering how busy of a day we had the previous day.