Petrópolis

Today I went for the day to the small city Petrópolis. It's close to Rio de Janeiro in the mountains. The heard of the city is this cute little square. Form here you can reach easily all the tourist attractions or just stroll along one of the small canals all around the city.

Because of the celebrations for Corpus Christi today, there were people creating a carpet of images made out of colored wood chips trough the hole city.

This is the main church of the city where the colorful carpet ended.

I visited this villa which is nowadays a museum but still in the hands of the original family. The great-grand nephew showed me around and explained how his family got rich with the exportation of coffee. I liked his stories very much especially about all the journeys his great-grand uncle had made to all parts of the world in times still without plains and cars. From every part of the world he had brought some furniture or building materials with him, so that the house is very international ;-)

To protect the old wooden floor I had to put on these funny slippers. It's very amusing to slide around the rooms with them!

In Brazil you don't need much to open up your own restaurant. Just park your car in the street, put up some stools and serve hot dogs out of the boot. This kind of "restaurant" is very common and very popular here. The one in the picture is even a luxury one. There are others preparing foot in the boot of small Fiats from the 90's! (Besides VW, Fiat is the most popular car brand here.)

The Cristal Palace is another landmark of Petrópolis. Many concerts and celebrations take place here. Because of strong German immigration in the region, they have a big "Bauernfest" here in July.

View over the city from the lookout "Nossa Senhora Fátima".

I love these little monkeys! Without the tail they have no more than 10 cm.

This house is another little museum I visited. It's the house of Santos Dumont. He is a national hero, because he is credited in Brazil as the "father of flight". If you ask a Brazilian, he will surely tell you that it was Santos Dumont who invented the first airplane. Although, others might see that a bit different, he surely was the first to make it very publicly. He won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize for the first flight from the Parc Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back in less than 30 minutes. After that he continued to invent other types of planes.

Santos Dumont designed this house according to his specific wishes. It is very small because he wanted everything very economical and multifunctional. His desk, for example, was at the same time is bed at night, He just put a mattress on it. Besides that, the house is full of other funny inventions, like a alcohol-fueled heated shower system with one string to add cold water to a bucked, one to add hot water and one string you finally pull to pour out the water over your head...

He was never really rich, but his house didn't have a kitchen. He used to order food from the luxury hotel at the other side of the street. Besides that he lived a simple live and never married. Nevertheless, he let a women fly with one of his airships. She most likely became the first woman to pilot a powered aircraft. Certainly Santos Dumont was a funny character!