Porto Alegre, Brazil

So at long last we arrive in Brazil and full of World Cup spirit. Wait, what?! They are where?! What are they doing on a beach in Ibiza? Oohhhh, OK. Cheers England.

Tourist Information are Liars

So we hop off the bus and walk straight to tourist info for a map and some tips, the standard protocol. Lovely people speaking really good English, which is great as we know zero Portuguese. We get our map and an X marked where our hotel was. We had to catch a train and then walk for about 3 blocks.

As we got off at the recommended stop I looked at the map and thought hang on, this can’t be right, these roads look completely different as where she marked on the map had a different road name. So after consulting with Brogan we went back on the train a stop back and got off where I (we) thought we should be. It turns out that tourist info could not of been more right, but the map I had was misleading.

So we ended up having to walk 12 blocks instead of 3 all because I, with help from Brogan I might add, am an idiot.

Fifa Fan Fest, Wet

Made our way to the Fan Fest a little after kick off to soak up some World Cup atmosphere, the only thing that got soaked, was us. It hammered it down the whole of the first half until our raincoats gave in and even they didn’t keep us dry anymore. We retreated to a bar for the second half as did many of the Brazilian and Chilean fans alike.

Guided Tour

Having met Carlos in Montevideo we asked him to show us round his home city. After walking round a few parts of the city we went for our first real taste of Brazilian food and just how big the portion sizes were! Huge!

Made our way to an Artisan bar that sold beers, amongst other things, from all over the world. After sinking a few mojitos we made our way back to the hotel.

Fifa Fan Fest, Take 2

It was game day in Porto Alegre and the Germans were out in force. Playing against Algeria that afternoon and we wanted to get some tickets. So we set off down ‘Caminho do Gol’ (road to goal) but unfortunately the tickets left were way out of our price range so had to settle with a trip to the FFF again.

No rain this time but it was still pretty cold, a few beers with 3 Brazilians we met and we were off. The one Brazilian had sold his only ticket to the match for quite a bit of money so set about feeding us all up on beer and hot dogs! He was pretty drunk by the end but still kept running to the bar to get more beers!

Churrasco

Met up with Carlos and his friend Dudu at the FFF and made our way to a Churrascaria to try some of the best Brazilian food ever! I have written a little post about it here. It is basically heaven on earth, non stop meat and sides brought to your table until you bust or say stop.

I was so in the zone for this meal I even had a mid meal ‘break’, to errrrm, ‘make, room’. I then proceeded to eat more, and more.

After 4 days of trying new Brazilian foods I was well in the mood for getting to the next place to try something else.