Brasília is the capitol of Brazil, and it´s actually an interesting story. The city was designed in the 50s and 60s by civil engineers for the purpose of being a very modern, organized, capitol city for Brasil. The original shape of the city was a cross, but as it´s grown it´s become more of an airplane. And the city is much different from any other Brazilian city I´ve been to-- so organized!
So we did some sightseeing and took the opportunity to see some government stuff. Honestly, this didn´t interest me much because I don´t know that much about these buildings and monuments and such. But it was cool and we did have some fun. :)
My favorite place was the Congressional Palace, which I guess is like our senate place thing. I am really ignorant about this stuff. :) I liked it because it was inside and air conditioned. Ha, no it was very cool, no pun intended.
As you can see it´s a very modern building, with the cereal bowl and upside down bowl things. I´m sure it´s all very symbolic, I just don´t know what it means. And then behind it is the building with the towers. Very beautiful!
I won´t bore you with a civics lesson, so here is some of the fun we had there. We were, ahem, a little irreverent at times I think. :)
This is Aníbal arm wrestling a statue.
Me sticking my head through a piece of national art.
Ivan pretending to be a senator
This was an interesting man. He saw me reading the famous quotes from the inaguration of Brasília inscribed on the wall, and came up to me and said, "I´ve been reading this for 50 years, and it is more beautiful every time." I´m not exactly sure what his political connection is, but he was apparently at the inagural mass for the city of Brasília. (yes, the inagural mass-- Catholic countries can do that!) Very nice guy, 78 years old.
This night we also took a late night tour of Brasília with one of our friends (the same ones who took us to the airport in the earlier post).
This is Jandira and I in front of Lula´s house. He´s the president.
And this it the JK Bridge. Very beautiful. JK stands for Juscelino Kubitschek, the President of Brazil who directed the building of Brasília. Pretty much half the city is monuments to this guy. :)
That´s all the photos I´ll put here, but you can see more at my webshots page.
1 comment:
Parabens on the visa extension. And good pictures! I remember going to those places many times with my family...I think any time people from the States visited us, we'd give them a tour. Did you go to the National Cathedral that's shaped like a crown of thorns (?), with a chalice-shaped bell tower and a bread-shaped baptizing room? That was always my favorite. But the other places are cool too--it's all so funky!
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