nicole_2

Diary Entry 2:

Today i have travelled to Southern most state in Brazil called Rio Grande do Sul. I am visiting the capital city of Porto Alegre. At 9am I got on a tourist bus line called Linha Turismo. it takes you through 11 neighbourhoods and shows the main attractions of the city (parks, trees, statues, hospitals, churches, etc). The best thing about it was that it had a speaker with audio guides in three different languages, including English. The trip is 28km long and lasts for about 1h20min, and the arrival is at the same departure address. The tickets cost 7 reais for a ticket that sits you on the second level of the bus, that has no ceiling. However, you can pay 5 reais for the lower level tickets. After my tour around the city, i decided I'd explore on my own. The local bus system is somewhat difficult to understand as a tourist, there are no maps, signs or schedules at the bus stops. The only way I figured out what bus to take was through asking the locals. The culture of the city isn't a "Brazilian culture", but almost an Argentinian or Uruguayan. The locals understand Spanish typically well and i managed to get out of them how to get to the local river Guaiba, as i had heard that to watch the sunset there was amazing. Smiles, politeness, and a feeling of cooperation were the norm, from the clerk selling the tickets through to the locals on the bus. I arrived at a place called Gasometro, and was lucky enough to see the beautiful senset from the fifth story of the Gasometro building. The wind was so strong and i was freezing. However it was the most amazing sunset i had ever seen. **__Porto Alegre Sunset__** I had read that walking around parts of Porto Alegre can be quite dangerous at nighttime so i decided to head back to the Hotel.

References:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto_Alegre - http://wikitravel.org/en/Porto_Alegre - [|http://www.flickr.com]