Salvador!!

Hey, everyone!

Today I’m going to talk about a place that I LOVE back in Brazil, Salvador. Salvador is the capital city of the state Bahia. It’s located in the northeast part of the country.

Before entering the company I used to work at, we had training in Salvador for three weeks! Were the most amazing three weeks of that year!

Salvador has amazing beaches, amazing people and amazing food. It’s the perfect place to eat sea food and their most famous dish called “acaraje” (it`s like a fried scone stuffed with vatapa and caruru  - spicy pastes made from shrimp, ground cashew nuts, palm oil and other ingredients – shrimps, salad and homemade hot sauce).

Some of the beaches there are very popular, so it’s always crowded and they have not a very good view. Some others, though, are amaaaaazing, like the one in Morro de Sao Paulo (a kind of an island, an hours from Salvador).

Salvador is also very popular for its carnival. It’s one of the most famous in Brazil. I’m going to spend carnival there for the first time now in 2012 and I’m REAAAAALY excited!!!

See ya!!

Pipa!!!

Hey guys!!!

Today I decided to talk about another amazing beach at my beautiful Brazil: Pipa. Pipa is a beach located at Tibau do Sul, Rio Grande do Norte. It’s in the northeast part of the country.

Pipa is reaaaaaaally small and totally based on tourism. It is a very common destination for international tourists, especially from Europe. What is good about Pipa is that it’s accessible for everybody. That are really nice resorts in front of the beach, nice places to eat, a very big night club that you can go at night… but there are also cheap hostels, lots of small places that you can eat unhealthy but really cheap food and you can always hang out at night and have some drinks at the main street, where people gather around to have some fun!

The main beach there is Praia do Amor (something like “Love Beach”) and it is just unbelievable! It’s similar to Black’s beach here in San Diego, where you have to go down the hill to get to the beach, so it can be hard to get there sometimes, but it is totally worth it. And you can alwaaaays lay down on the beach and have a cold beer to relax (better than Black’s, huh?).

That’s it for today!

See you next time!

Fernando de Noronha!

Hello, everybody!

This week I’m going to talk a little bit about my experience in Fernando de Noronha.

Fernando de Noronha is an archipelago in the Northeast of Brazil. I would say it is the Brazilian Hawaii. The place is unbelievable!!!!! The most amazing beaches I have ever seen in my whole life (and yes, I have been to Hawaii), super hot weather, lots of good places to surf (they often host big surf competitions there), good seafood, good night life.

However, Noronha is not a very popular destination for Brazilians because it is really expensive!! Depending on the city, is cheaper to come to the US fir a few days than to go there. You have to pay an “preservation” fee for each day you are there, they have limited tourists each year and some beaches are closed for visitation during sometime of the year because turtles go there to put their eggs. =)

My cousin lives there, so for me was waaaaay cheaper to go. We got cheaper flights, I didn’t have to pay for accommodation, she has a car…. I’m just really lucky to have had the opportunity to go there.

My favorite place in Noronha is Baía do Sancho, an amazing beach where from the top, you can see the whole island and the most famous mountains in the middle of the water, and then you can go into a huge rock, where they built stairs so you can go to the beach underneath it! Just AMAZING!!!

See you!! ;)

Banff!

Hi!!!

Today I’m going to talk a little bit about my experience in Banff.

After studying in Toronto for three months, I decided to start working and I found a job in Banff, a very small town west of Canada, near Calgary. Banff’s economy is entirely based on tourism so I found a good job on a Resort over there.

It was just unbelievable! I had one of the best times of my life! I worked as a waitress on banquets and in the hotel’s restaurant so it was kind of an easy job, not much responsibility, no assignments, no taking working home. At that time, in that place, was the perfect job for me.

The city is suuuuper cute. It is really small, but has lots of good places to visit, to eat, to drink. My favorite place there is the gondola, where you can see the rocky mountains from the top (see picture in he end of the post). It is really amazing. One funny thing about Banff is that I’ve never met someone who was from there. Everybody in town comes from somewhere else to work and make god money. It is also funny that, because it is a small town, the person you saw on Sundays going crazy on the most popular club there (Aurora) was the same person attending you on Safeway or McDonalds.

The cities near Banff, like Lake Louise and Jasper are also beautiful and worth visiting.

That’s all for now. See you!

Toronto!

Hello guys!

The first place I decided to talk about is Toronto. I spent my summer of 2008 there and it was one of the greatest experiences ever. I used to study business communication in an English school in downtown. It was amazing how many people from all over the world  I met.

One f the biggest challenges of Brazilian students when they go to other country is to keep distance from other Brazilian students. Brazilian people bond very easily and it is even easier to become very good friends with them and start speaking portuguese all the time. And it is the last thing you want when you (or your parents) invested lots and lots of money on you travelling abroad to improve your English.

Luckily for me, all the Brazilians that I met and became friends with went back to Brazil on the first month.  So I kept hanging out with Korean, Japanese, Russian, Swedish people. It was just unbelievable how many things I learned about all this countries.

The city was also amazing. I really could see myself making a life there if It wasn’t sooooo cold in the winter. People are very, very nice, public transportation is perfect (we didn’t need a car for ANYTHING! Much different from San Diego...), quality of life is one of the highest in the world…

If you haven’t been there, you should. It’s a big city, it’s a business city but is not chaotic at all.

If I had to sum up my impressions about Toronto I would just say that it is a city that works. You can work hard, you can party hard, you can have kids, you can raise your family, you can go to the beach on the weekends, you can just go read a book on High Park or ride a bicycle on Toronto Island… you can do everything!

Well… that was a little bit of my experience in Toronto. Maybe in other posts I can go back there and share some fun or important facts.

That’s all for today.  Next is Banff – Alberta.

My places....

Hi everyone!

Just created my blog and I decided to share with you some of my experiences travelling, places I have been and some others that I hope to go someday.

Travelling is one of my passions. Wish I could do it more but a student budget is not exactly the ideal one to finance this passion. It doesn’t have to be a big trip, it doesn’t have to be to a place far way, it doesn’t have to be expensive. If I have the opportunity to get to know a new place, new culture, new people, I’m in. If I don’t have the opportunity to do any of that, I’m in too.

I believe that you come back from every trip with a little bit more than what you had (except money!). Sometimes is a new way of life, sometimes is new friends, sometimes is just good stories to tell.

In the next posts I’ll tell you a little bit of places I have been, what did I do there and what did I think of it!

Hope you enjoy!