Day 47: Exploring Scorching Salvador with Two Tired Tiny Humans
It felt like we only just finished our late night room service club sandwich when — at 6:30am! — 20–person Brazilian musical troupe / marching band / alarm clock decided to play for an hour in the park outside our window. Maybe practicing for Carnival which begins in 10 days? Either way, it woke all of us about 3 hours too early given the late night. Margaret and I got back to sleep for a bit but the kids were awake and fully ready to misbehave for most of the day!
After a meh hotel breakfast buffet we spent a few minutes at the small playground across the street. The kids eyed it from the hotel room and insisted we check it out. The heat and humidity was intense from the moment we walked outside. Not a great combo with the lack of sleep.
Then we made our way into the historic / tourist area of Salvador. Visually Salvador is a mix of Havana, Cartagena and Valparaiso. The city has a long, interesting and tragic history — the main historic / tourist area is called Pelourinho — Portuguese for pillory — which gives you a sense for how much slavery is a part of that history.
It didn’t take long to realize that we aren’t here for nearly enough time to do anything but scratch the surface — especially considering the kids exhaustion.
We Uber’d to the Pelourinho and spent some time in the Igreja e Convento de São Francisco.
At one point, after wandering through the old church and answering a million questions about Christianity and Jesus (for the millionth time), we were look out onto a neighborhood whose main feature was a square where slaves were traded and publicly flogged. Willa asked, “What came first – Jesus or slavery?”
Out of the mouths of babes…
We strolled that neighborhood for a bit, ducking into stores and finally got James the Neymar uni he’s been looking for. We then returned to the main square for lunch at touristy but tasty Cuco Bistro.
The kids were asking (read: whining) for the pool so we returned to the hotel and spent a couple hours cooling off. After some quiet time in the room we showered up and headed to the bohemian Rio Vermelho neighborhood for dinner at Dona Mariquita.
We struggled through a 100% Portuguese menu and a wait staff that spoke zero English. But after some Google searching, Spanish speaking and referencing now-familiar Brazilian dishes we had a really good meal.
Headed up the coast to the beach tomorrow.
