20260125 Sunday Recife, Brazil 1330 - 2000
An exciting seaport known as the "Venice of Brazil”—thanks to its many waterways, bridges and small islands—Recife is a mix of new high-rises and old colonial structures, with plenty to see and even more to do.
Wiki for Recife
We're going to take a ship's tour by catamaran.
In the evening, the AzAmazing event is scheduled ashore.
That was quite a day. First, O decided to do laundry. He was back and forth to the laundry four times, all the while enjoying a continental with coffee for breakfast.
We had a light lunch outside in the Sun room aft of Windows. Beautiful day near the equator.
Timing is a little screwed up here. Since Brazil has one time zone, and we are way to the east in it, the sun rises around 0500 and sets at 1730. You get used to it.
We made tha approach into Recife around 1300, driving between the jetties and curving around to the port. Where we tied up is on the opposite end of the industrial port, so any trip to town requires a shuttle-bus to take you to the entry place.'
The entry building is very modern and like all place having tourist business, the path through it requires much wending and weaving, including a ramp to the second floor and another back down. This being a Sunday, there weren't many vendors.
Our excursion today took us by shuttle to the entry, then bus into town to a prison. At least, it was once a prison and could easily be converted back to a prison.
It has three long wings off a center hall and a short wing out to the street. Each of the old cells houses a vendor of local goodies, but two are kept original. We walked two of the wings looking for things. We purchased a shirt for D and her collector's pin. O blew the exchange rate and paid too much.
Back to the bus to the next place - the catamaran tour dock. The bus backed 200 meters into its parking place and all of the people in two buses filed onto the catamaran.
Referring to the port map above, we started from the bottom edge below the Mercado, came up and turned left. Up into the large open area and left again up the Pernambuco river. We went in several hundred meters looking at old Recife and new Recife, then turned back up through the open area and around the "island" the port sits on. Returning to dock, we passed our Quest at the cruise port as well as HMS Forth (P222), a British patrol vessel. Down to the bottom edge and done. Look at the pictures to see what we saw.
Photo Link to today's pictures
Azamara has an event they call AzAmazing. Today was the day.
Again, the shuttle and bus routine, this time for a looonnng ride to:
https://www.mercadanca.com.br/en/equipamentos-culturais/teatro-luiz-mendonca
The place is a nice auditorium seating around a thousand, since our 780 nearly filled it. The performance is to show cultural roots through dance.
The performers and costumes were amazing. You'll get the concept looking at today's pictures. In the 20 or so separate skits, the persons on stage never stopped moving. They were continually dancing at a fast tempo, weaving in patterns and ending with a yell; then into the next skit.
In most of the skits the theme could be seen; early natives, later conquistadores, business. One included a dog or rat costume; that dancer tried to get us clapping in tempo, finally succeeding.
The day had been nice because we had our umbrella with us. But we forgot it for this performance. So at the end, it rained. We waited a bit and it went away. We did the loooonnng trip back to the ship. There, ALL of us went into Windows like rampaging animals to get food; remember, we'd had no break between the tour and the AzAmazing. Our regular waiter Igor took care of us.
We went then to the cabin and flopped into bed about 2315. Longish day for persons of advanced middle age.
But good.
2025016 Monday At Sea
Slow day. Slept in late after yesterday's adventures.
In the morning O worked on the web site, describing yesterday.
Then Progressive Trivia with our Canadian friends - did rather well, we thought.
Lunch in Windows inside (no tables available outside).
Trivia contest today was to compete with a team from the ship's entertainers. Five subjects Science, Sport, Art, History, and General. We did ok except in Art. Overall, we beat the entertainers, who had 16 of 25. We had 17. Woot!!
