Curitiba
Trip Start
Nov 01, 2004
1
83
133
Trip End
Nov 01, 2005
Curitiba,
Brazil
Sunday, June 5, 2005
We arrived in Curitiba about 6am and found a hotel near the bus station. We checked in and after a quick shower and change we headed out to catch the train to Paranagua. It is the most "exciting" train journey in Brazil and we had some lovely views of tree covered mountains and steep valleys below the railway line which clings to the hillside high up. We were on the wrong side of the train for the views (although we had asked for the best side) but still managed to see some wonderful sights in the 4 hour journey. The train ran an hour late (5 hours) and we only had 40 minutes in Paranagua - which in the brief bit we saw looked lovely. We boarded the train and had another 5 hours back to Curitiba. At the first main station we joined some more carriages and the attendant took us to our reserved seats - only to find people in them
01 View From Train
! The carriage was full of one group and they seemed to argue a lot with the attendant - they eventually gave up two seats and they were on the other side from our reserved seats - so we got to sit on the good side!!! We got even better views on the way home with the sun setting too! The only drawback was that the group were very loud through the entire journey and even had a sing-along session with a guitar (which was badly out of tune! - like their voices). We got off and headed for the nearest open restaurant as we hadnīt eaten anything decent since yesterday! - it was Chinese and filled the gap nicely.Day 219 Monday 06/06/05 Curitiba
We had a well deserved and long time coming lie-in. We then wandered through Curitiba which is the nicest city we have yet found in Brazil. Itīs clean and friendly and has quite a lot of older nice buildings. The cathedral is lovely and then we found the historic quarter......which was beautiful. Lovely buildings with cobbled streets, some nice fountains, statues, trees and for the first time - interesting arty shops. We browsed around the area and had a bite to eat in a Mosaic shop/cafe - where you can do courses in mosaic making!! We bought a couple of things in the shops and the people around here were so nice! In one shop we bought something for 12 reals and got some extra bubblewrap too (try finding that in a dictionary over here!!) - she had no change and we tried to give her 15 and she wanted 10 (all of about 3 euro). Eventually we got to pay the extra and left with big smiles. We then headed for Rua 24 Horas and on the way found a market (mainly food) in one of the local parks. This is definitely a nice pit-stop city. We then found a cinema and watched "Ella Enchanted" which is really a kiddy movie - we wanted to see it as the daughter of one of Sue Rickardīs neighbours is in it (it was filmed in Ireland).
