Day 4: Out and about

Today we just hung out downtown. Picked up an obligatory hammock, looked at cheap clothing in the center, ate and checked out a cathedral.

A few sites from today.
I don’t like the design layout of cathedrals, but the actual art is beautiful.

I think the menu says horse meat..Cavalo…or hubby is messing with me. Restaurant Barcelona on the beach.

And finally, we had dinner at Colher de Pau. Great food, but we misread the menu and each got a 2 person dish. The $60  shrimp dish I ordered my husband tried to make me finish off….I am so over seafood. He got the salmon, which was great as well.

Day 3: Prainhia and Beach Park

So technically it’s day 4, as day 1 should be when we arrived, but we were so tired that we didn’t do a whole lot on day one but grocery shop and try and get our son to go to sleep… you wake a one year old at 5am for a flight, he’s not a happy camper.  He was even angrier on “day 2” when we tried to put him down for afternoon naps. So today we thought we’d make it a special day for him.

We woke up at 6am (per his normal excruciatingly painful routine) and headed out to Prainhia a beach outside of Fortaleza city.  These are pristine, large sandy beaches that were perfect for the little guy.  No one was out at 10:30am when we arrived, so he had the beach to himself, to run up and down and collect shells, swim in the warm, blue clean water.

 It was low tide so the beach was very very large at this point, and 3/4 of the way to the beach restaurants (it’s Brazil, there are always the restaurants with shade and seats) there were little sandpools from the night before.

The water was very warm, the depth was perfect, and my son was set.

Had we stayed longer, we could have lounged in a hammock, played pool or swam in one of the pools. But we were set to go to the beach park today!

Yes, R$135 each. The Disneyland of Fortaleza, the largest water park in all of South America.  I was thinking, this had better be worth it!  And for me, Beach Park did not dissapoint.  Because it was a Monday, during school, on off season the park was very empty, it was perfect!  The lazy river had plenty of inner tubes, the wave pool wasn’t crowded at all, and there were no lines for any of the slides.  The best part about Brazil is that people are not sue happy here, and they love kids.

Case in point, there were 5 different play areas throughout the park for the little kids.  Usually there’s 1-1.5 at waterparks.  There were tons of slides, and water fountains, and water cannons, and water seesaws, and water jumpy chairs.  In fact, one of the larger twisty slides let us go down with our son in our lap, and other of the large slides, one of the life guards, hand held/walked my son down the slide (as parents weren’t aloud to sit their child on their lap for that one).  Overall, if you have kids it’s great. You can lounge in the sun and your kid can play in the kiddie section, which is adjacent to the “fun slides” that your husband and older kids want to go on.  Food wasn’t too bad either, we did por Kilo so paid ~R$30 for a plate of food.  If you forget baby food, the restaurant had a jar for R$7 … so about double in price of Pao de Acucar.

Day 1: Praia de Iracema, Fortaleza

I started the vacation at the airport… I unloaded the 1 year old off on my husband on the 3.5 hour flight up.  To be fair, I get the lil guy in a few weeks for a 14 hour flight back to the US, so I’m fulling enjoying this vacation… I need to store up.

See daddy is holding baby…not so baby anymore, more like wild bundle of energy that never stops wiggling, squirming, and pinching.

Fortaleza this time of year is a nice get away from Sao Paulo, as it’s warm here! I think it’s perfect, not too humid, not too hot, great ocean breeze (this is the windiest month of the year).  My husband found an apartment online and it’s a block off the beach, which is nice.  Not that I’ve really found the beach to be that stunningly clean that I want to have my son swim in the water.  This beach has great night shopping… ok fine, this one has lots of kitschy tourist crap to suck us tourists in with.  There are also rollerbladers galore due to the rentals all over the place.

Because all of the little stands on the beach selling tourist kitsch weren’t enough for us, we headed to the Mercado Central, which was four stories of shops, mostly selling the same stuff and yes I bought a few items.  As you can see, beach wear, kitsch, and a lot of hammocks and tablecloths.

I bought something in this photo

I wanted to buy a sun hat (R$50)… and we figured that was a bit steep.  I found one for R$15 at the beach, and was accosted at least twice by the wandering salesmen selling the hats for R$10… so keep that in mind prices vary wildly.

Down the beach a bit is the seafood market, and man did I want to eat some shrimp after looking at all of the amazingly fresh seafood.

My son wasn’t so sure, and the sales guys were even more wary that their lobsters were gonna pinch off the lil guy’s finger.

The snapper didn’t make me want to eat them however…. something about the teeth.

My husband said that you can buy the shrimp, and there are places right nearby that will cook it up.  The fish is that fresh.  And man, was I hungry for some seafood.  Hubby not being from Hawaii, is more of a meat and potatoes guy, so for lunch we hit up Geppos on the beach. Not cheap for Fortaleza standards, but good priced when you compare to Sao Paulo, and the food was great. R$35 for the garlic shrimp and the same for Filet Mignon.

They also had highchairs, not those little wooden chairs they try and pass off as acceptable for a squirming 1 year old, but real highchairs, that you can strap the little guy in with.  That alone made the restaurant 5 stars in my book.  The waiter thought we had a cute little girl, so he made a girl for him to play with, and by the time he finished painting on red lips, he realized the error in his assumption. Granted I do have a very beautiful son.

 

 

 

 

 

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Check your underwear

I had to laugh when I read this news article.

Brazilian underwear to come with health warnings after 12 years of debate

Just like the cigarette packages here that comes with warnings, your underwear will also come with warnings.  You think they’ll be as … um graphic as the cigarette packaging?

So check your underwear packaging, because if you buy it in Brazil it’s going to remind you to get those mammograms or check for prostate cancer, and if you are a woman your underwear will remind you of the importance of condoms in preventing cervical cancer (seriously the zillion other reasons why condoms should be used were not important? And why are only woman’s underwear targeted?).

What’s hilarious (or sad) is that 12 years of government money was wasted on this bill.  The Brazilian government could have been looking at sooo many other important issues, but they spent their time on this one.  I also agree with the manufacturers, it will cost more for them to implement, and those costs will be passed along to the end user.  So next time you ask why things are so expensive here in Brazil, well here’s yet another reason.

 

cough syrup in Brazil

Ok, I KNOW NOTHING about this, and I could google the crap out of a bunch of fancy terms, but my head hurts and I don’t feel like it. So here’s my watered down version, and any of you readers out there got answers??

Hubby was sick recently and headed to the pharmacy to pick up some Cough Syrup. Just plane ole coat your throat and stop you from coughing syrup.  See he is asthmatic so he tends to cough rather loudly when sick (like I want to smother him with a pillow until he doesn’t breath anymore so I don’t have to hear him as every time he coughs my heart stops loud).  His throat get’s really irritable. So he just needs something to sooth it and calm it and not make him cough. Easy enough this silly American would think. Wrong. This is Brazil, nothing is easy. FINE nothing is easy when you’re a lazy American who has lived her 6 months and still only speaks broken Portuguese.

The lady at the counter let me go behind the counter to look through the cough syrups. I was looking for one without an expectorant, as he didn’t need it… that’s the last thing I need, something to make him cough more! Just the following 2… ingredients in Vicks Nyquil.

Dextromethorphan HBr 30 mg (Cough suppressant)

Doxylamine succinate 12.5 mg (Antihistamine)

Yeah, they didn’t have it.  Googling (fine I admit it, my google instinct got the best of me) did find a few medicines with the above fancy active ingredients (and several with expectorant as well), but didn’t seem super common.  What’s up Brazil? Is cough syrup not that common?  There were only 2 shelves about 2 feet wide at the pharmacy… and in the US such a condition would have at least 2 5 foot shelves… at least.

Vacinas

Since I have a wee one, I get to go to the Vaccine clinic every few months so he can get his round of shots.  I think if we were in the US, I’d probably put him on a somewhat modified vaccine schedule, but we’re in Sao Paulo, so he’s getting all of his shots, and then some!

See our doctor doesn’t give shots as he’s a clinic.  I go to SPAC and I really like the doctor. He’s very very friendly with my son and makes the whole thing fun, not so much a poke and prod.  That and he speaks perfect English. Anyway, right around the corner from our apartment is the Vacinar Centro de Distribuição e Imunização. For the record NEVER go on a Saturday, it’s packed.  We usually go right before his nap, he gets to walk there like a big boy, so looks forward to the trip, and then I carry him back and put him in bed.

The clinic is interesting because unlike the US, the nurse doesn’t just come in and pull out a shot and stick it in your kid, no here she brings in the full box, shows you the vaccine and the valid till date, then preps the needle in front of you.  I would tend to think this is a result of unscrupulous practices and probably some legislation (they legislate the crap out of things), to protect kids.  Either way it’s added comfort to me, and makes me feel a little more in control… in a situation parents usually don’t.

 

Choosing your baby’s sex

So my hubby read this article the other day on the Drudge Report. It was odd, because I swear when I was pregnant with the monkey I had googled how to find out my son’s sex early, and ran across something about blood tests as early as 8 weeks, so when he mentioned this to me just now, I started the google…and, what I found is like the article mentions it’s not really part of the US practice, but I found all these old studies from 2003… so then I googled if any clinics have it and here are two:  offering Sexagem Fetal and Pro Clinco.  And from a Brazilian blog it’s like R$380 so not cheap… or cheap depending on how your categorize Brazilian expenses.

From Dona-Barriga's blog

Which made me think, I have to friend one at 15 weeks and one at 24 weeks who just found out the sex of their babies.  And the whole reason that they had to wait that long was because the US is worried that by allowing you to discover the sex of your baby early, people may get abortions.

Literally, I lay in bed last night thinking about this.

In the US where abortions are completely legal, and where fetuses are not considered to be alive until birth, finding out the sex of the fetus early (and there are real medical reasons why this would matter, not just what color the baby’s room will be painted), is not something that we Americans feel we should allow. How does that make sense?

But then I got to thinking, Brazil is a VERY religious country, are abortions in Brazil even legal?? And according to Wikipedia.. yeah, yeah I know it’s not the law.. they’re not really legal unless the mother’s life is in danger or it was rape.  Per Wikipedia Brazilians don’t seem even close to wanting to legalize it.

A March 2007 Datafolha/Folha de S. Paulo poll found that 65% of Brazilians believe that their country’s current law “should not be modified”, 16% that it should be expanded “to allow abortion in other cases”, 10% that abortion should be “decriminalized”, and 5% were “not sure”

Which brings me back to my original thought.  We all know even with abortions being illegal in Brazil they happen, so if the whole point of the US saying they don’t want people to find out the sex of the babies is because it could increase abortions, wouldn’t that same/similar logic apply to Brazil? I would think they don’t want people going out and getting illegal abortions.

Personally, I think people, even people who are okay with abortions, take issue with choosing to abort a baby if it’s one sex even if you would keep it if it were another.   When you get into the waters of picking babies’ sex or other attributes, I guess you get into a whole different bucket of ethics as well.  Thus why the US still hasn’t fully allowed this type of testing. Heck in China a test like this could have saved lives… or would have… back in the day… before there were tens of millions of single men.

Either way, this is one time where I’m going to have to say I like Brazil’s way of thinking about medicine better than the US’…but just one 😉

 

Addicting

When I saw these in the store I thought of Juno and orange flavored tic tacs.  Then I thought about how much I hate cherries and how much my husband loves passion fruit.  And of course then I bought it because I’m a sucker for exotic candies.

I figured I’d try one cherry, one passion fruit, and one with both.  4 hours later it was empty and sitting on the floor.

Hubby came home and asked why there were two yellow tic tacs in an almost empty tic tac container he didn’t know we had. I had to fess up I had eaten them all… and darn it how in the world had I missed those two precious suckers.

Moral is, those cherry and passion fruit tic tacs are amazing, the sweet and the sour is pure bliss.

Guava Lime Bars

I saw this recipe on Pinterest and it looked super yummy. Addicted to that by the way. Back to the point.

I’m in Brasil, and while my grocery store does carry lemons, I buy limes as they are cheaper.  I also didn’t have strawberries on hand, even though they’ve finally in season and so cheap enough to buy. I only had a packet of frozen guava…and yes I said package. You don’t buy your juice in little tin concentrate cans. You buy it in little plastic baggies, and then mix it with water and server.  Normally you don’t add sugar, as there is a a little thing of sugar or liquid fake sugar at the table for people to mix it themselves.

So here is my Brasil twist on lemon bars.

Guava Lime Bars
Adapted from Baking Bites

Crust
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt

Filling
1 cup fresh lime juice (about 4 Tahiti limes)
2-3 tsp lime zest
1/2 cup pureed guava (1 large frozen bag)
1 1/4 cups sugar (If you like your bars sweeter, I’d up the amount as these are tart!)
4 large eggs
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a 9×13-inch baking pan.

Begin by making the crust.  In a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter, until smooth and fluffy. Working at a low speed, gradually beat in flour and salt until mixture is crumbly. Pour into prepared pan and press into an even layer. Bake for about 17 minutes, until set at the edges.

While the crust bakes, prepare the filling.  In a blender, combine lime juice, lime zest, guava puree, sugar and eggs and process until smooth. Add in flour, baking powder and salt, then pulse until smooth.

Gently pour the filling over the hot crust when it has finished baking. Return pan to oven and bake for 26-30 minutes, until the filling is set (There will be a light colored “crust” on top from the sugar in the custard – nothing to worry about).  Then gently dust with powdered sugar.