A weekend in Curitiba

First of all, I just wanted to share about my near nervous breakdown this weekend.  I went into the office on Saturday morning to check my email and I didn't have an internet connection!  ACK!  My connection to the outside world was severed and 1) I had no idea who to ask about it, and 2) I couldn't ask about who to call, since I know no Portuguese, and 3) even if I did know who to call, there was that whole language issue again.   I  was very worried.  Mac determined that, somehow, even though we couldn't get on the internet, skype was still working.  I was talking to a friend Sunday afternoon and had her do some google searching and she turned up the answer to our problem.  And (deep breath) I was back online.  Crisis averted.

We decided to spend this weekend looking around the city of Curitiba a little bit more.  On Saturday we went to the municipal market.  This was our first trip on the much-discussed Curitiba city bus system.  Seriously, try to find any sort of article about Curitiba that doesn't mention the buses.  I dare you.  It is pretty nice - instead of waiting at a bus stop and paying as you get one, the buses here have glass "tubes" that you pay to enter then wait inside until the bus pulls up. It means your out of the weather if it's crummy and the bus waits less than 10 seconds at each stop for people to get on and off.  And plenty of people ride the buses here - the main city buses are bi-articulated, which means their kind of three buses in one, and, as far as I can tell, they are always full.  The buses have dedicates lanes in the road, so the whole experience is pretty quick.  I'll try to get pictures one of these days.

The market was only three stops down from our apartment, so it was an easy first trip.  The municipal market is hard to describe - think of anything you might want to buy, and you can probably find it.  It's indoors and probably has a few hundred stalls.  Food (fresh produce, butchers, dry good), doo-dads, liquor - it's all there.  And it was packed.

There are a couple of food courts and we had lunch there - at a Japanese restaurant.  It was probably pretty funny to watch us try to order Japanese food in Portuguese.  We ended up with some good stuff, though.  Here we are waiting...

 We walked around inside a little more, then around the bus station across the street.  The most important thing we did there was pick up a map of the city.  That's going to be pretty helpful.

In fact, the map led us to our Sunday adventure - to the handicraft fair held in the historical center of the city every Sunday.   We took the bus once again. Yipee!  After getting our bearings and walking for a while, we got to the fair, and met up with probably 75% of the population of Curitiba (currently around 1.8 million).  Ok, maybe not that many people, but it was pretty crowded.  There were lots of handicraft type things (Mac likened it to Gold Rush days, for those of you familiar), but we couldn't really stop much in the push of people.  I don't think the girls saw anything but legs.  It was nice to get out, though.

We needed lunch, once again (certain small people in the family get pretty grumpy once meal times come and go).  We stopped at what we thought was a fast food place.  It looked like a fast food joint anyway, and it had a picture menu on the wall, which was helpful.  And it was close.  Looked good. 

Turns out it wasn't very fast at all.  In fact, it was very very slow.

Two grumpy girls, trying to convince me that they are about to pass out from hunger.  Don't worry - they made it through and recovered nicely after some food. 

That's about it.  Not a lot that was super exciting, but we learned a little more about our surroundings.

We also did movie night both nights this past weekend  - we've been watching the BBC Planet Earth series. I highly recommend it - the girls are enthralled (although Maggie is starting to get weary of all of the predation) and there have been several times where Mac and I have thought or said "I had no idea!"  It's very cool.