Teaching My Way Through Brazil: Belo Horizonte

I arrived in Belo and battled the rodoviaria crowds. It was such a confusing set up with buses arriving on one side and then needing to go upstairs for the main level, cross the street for the main building, and then in that building has lettered section staircases to descend for taking the buses. I looked around the bottom layer for the bus tickets without success, but I finally explored the top level and found them. I had the company print out my return bus ticket.

Maddy arrived about 30-40 minutes after I did, so I found her in the bottom level and then we went to the main level for her tickets. Evidently in the Belo bus terminal you have to pay 2 reais to use the bathroom, but if you have an outgoing ticket then it’s free… but not if you have a ticket from just arriving. We also struggled to find the uber pick up zone, but we need to descend down the staircase again and follow the “taxi aplicativos” signs to a separate parking loop area. They feed the ubers in very slowly, and it took about 30 minutes for him to arrive.

We finally made it to the hostel, and it was kind of shabby, but that’s what you get for $19 usd a night and a private room sometimes. We organized ourselves a little bit and then walked about 30 minutes through town to the Mercado Municipal. On the way there I ate my first Minas pao de queijo and it was so incredibly cheesy! I was one happy girl. We met up with a friend Mady had made on her trip to the Amazonas. Pedro and Patricia showed up around the maze of a market. I felt way bigger than Sao Paulo’s Mercado Municipal. As we looped through, I bought some goiabada and postcards. We also stopped at a place and ate some warm broa, which is like a cornbread with melted cheese. The market had everything from kitchenware to fruits and restaurants, to souvenirs.

After we left the market and walked towards the Municipal City Park, we stumbled on a corpus christi art exhibition on the sidewalk. It had pictures and figures made with sand and wood chips, and the images made a line on the road that connected two churches in town. Before going into the park, we stopped in the Palacio das Artes, and only a small photo exhibition was open. I adored the Municipal park! It was huge and lush with lots of places to sit on grass or walk around lakes. There was even a permanent amusement park there, which was very full for the holiday weekend. As we walked by the gazebo in the middle of the lake, I enjoyed a dolce de leite treat I had bought. One of the lakes had row boats to rent, which reminded me of Central Park.

Maddy and I split off to have lunch, and we went to a place that had a prato do dia for 15 reais so big that neither of us could finish. It included rice (taupera), chicken, lettuce, tomatoes, and french fries. After lunch, we headed to the Praca Liberdade, one of the bumping places in town. Our first museum we visited at the square was called Museum da Vale, and it was by far my favorite. It had a lot of exhibitions through the three stories, including photo realism, a projection on a hand and head sculpture that talked to give a history show, a room of video images in picture frames that talked together, and a room filled with items all painted beige and hung on walls and ceiling. They found so many inventive ways to make history more exciting than plaques. We popped into the Minas and Medal museum, but it didn’t catch our attention and we left. We did take some time to walk through the UFMG museum, and they had a few stories each with a different theme- like astronomy and creation stories.

At that point I wasn’t feeling well, so we went back to the hostel to take a quick nap, but slept right through the Corpus Christi procession unfortunately. We got there too late and it was already over, so we went into the church and got to see part of the ending ceremony. The CCBB center is also in Praca Liberdade, and they had a line that went around the block all day for their Dreamworks exhibit. Maddy and I got in for free and walked through the exhibitions with lots of sketches from Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon, and other Dreamworks films. It was very cool to see the details that went into the animations. To end the night, we met up with Pedro again at Bar Vinicula for some wine, dinner, and dessert.