World Cup 2014 - Day 6

---

Got up and had good old cereal for breakfast. We also decided to do laundry today as we're fast running out of clean clothes plus there is no dryer here so we have to make sure there's enough time for it to dry on its own.

Aroud 9 am we visited the Palacio de Planalto, the official workplace of the President of Brazil. I suppose by extension it is also the workplace of the execuitive branch, since the same plaza had the buildings for the Legislative and Judicial Branches as well. All of these buildings, just like the rest of the city, were designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer and it is a very modern stylistic design especially compared to govt buildings in other countries which are usually classical. A lady gave us about a 15-minute tour of the inside of the Planalto building pointing out some tidbits and important places like where the president gives the inaugural address etc. All of the furniture inside was designed by Niemeyer as well.

There were two other palaces: Palacio da Alvorada as well as the Palacio do Jaburu which are the residences (as opposed to workplace) of the president and vice-president respectively that we visited in the afternoon. The Palacio da Alvorada is basically the Brazilian equivalent of the White House. But it is similar only conceptually, since visually it has the same modern style of Niemeyer and looks vastly different from the classical dome you see in DC. It just looks like a fancy multi-million dollar home with a swimming pool and interesting architecture. There were also huge gardens where they even had ostriches/emus walking casually around. One unfortunate thing was that the tour was completely in Portuguese. They advertised on the website that they had English tours, and when we got there and were waiting for our turn i even spoke to one of them about the availability of an English tour and one of the workers there spoke perfect English and said would guide us when our group left. So group by group left by bus to see the palaces but that guy just disappeared when it was our turn. When we got to the palace i asked the tour guide who did come with us whether she knows English, but she replied that since she was leading a group of 30 people and the rest of them all wanted Portuguese she cannot do it in English. So we just had to go along with it and walk everywhere without understanding what she was saying. I'm sure it was nothing major; probably just mildly interesting factoids about the different rooms. Speaking of rooms, we didn't actually enter the rooms of the palace; since all the walls are made of glass we were just looking in from the outside. You'll see in the photos.

So slightly disappointing that we didn't have the tour in English, but at least it was free and the buildings and surrounding areas did look nice.

For dinner we crossed off one more thing from our checklist of things to do in Brazil: it is supposed to be famous for churrascaria (barbecue) rodizios (all-you-can eat style restaurant). There's an especially famous one called Fogo de Chao which has brances even in the US, although i've never been to one. We intentionally didn't eat much lunch and went there really hungry.

Basically you sit down and there is a card on your table which is face down and red in color. When you turn it over it's green, and that means they can start serving you. There's basically guys walking around with skewers with different kinds of meat and they keep coming by tables and offering what they have. If you say yes, they carve you piece right in front of you and move on. It was so delicious and there was just an unbelievable amount. About 5 minutes after turning my card green my plate was full so i turned it red again. Then another waiter playfully came by and turned it green again smiling as if to say it's too early for that! Skewer after skewer came by and most of the time i didn't even know what they were saying in Portuguese when describing the meat (again they used English for Bryant, but assumed i was Portuguese), but even though i didn't know what it was i just kept saying yes over and over. Must have eaten lamb, pork, chicken, sausage, liver, ribs, and about 6 different cuts of beef. They also had that same pudina chutney type sauce we have in our kebab restaurants and almost all the meats i tried were juicy and delicious. We finally gave up after about 3 full plates; i'm sure a younger version of me could've eaten even more! They even had dessert, but Bryant said no before the Nathan family gene in my stomach could pipe up and say yes. I'm thankful he cut me off because that would've been a bad decision given how much i already stuffed myself.

---