Blumenau to Florianopolis Day 1

Today was not too busy. We had our free breakfast at the hotel before packing up and heading out to Florianopolis. The drive wasn't too long and we didn't hit very much traffic thankfully. The road wasn't very eventful unfortunately.

Once in Florianopolis we parked at a public park. It was a big park with lots of different sports fields available like soccer, basketball, and beach volleyball. There was also a walking and bike track around the whole thing. Florianopolis is an interesting place. It's mostly an island that is connected by a bridge just off the coast of Brazil. The park was near the coast, so after getting some food, we decided to walk across the bridge onto the island. We climbed up some steep steps under the bridge before making our way across. The layout was reminiscent of the Forth Road Bridge: there's an old road bridge now closed to vehicles for people to walk across and next to it is a new road bridge for the vehicles.

As we walked across the bridge the sun was setting so we got some nice pictures of the bridge, surrounding mountains, and colorful sky. On the island, we walked into the historic center to the main plaza. It was getting dark now, so there were some nice lights on some of the buildings. There were some lovely buildings with white molding and accents on pastel colored facades. There were string lights along the pedestrianized road too.

We went to the central square where a big tree was in the middle lit up with purple lights. We also heard drumming and singing coming from the far end of the square so we followed it. There was a samba group practicing for what we assumed was Carnaval. We sat on the steps of the cathedral and watched the dancing and drumming. They went down the small street in front of the towering cathedral, and we briefly followed as they turned left to continue down the quiet street. It was great to see the performers up close and personal with only a small crowd.

After we watched the samba group, we went back along the street to the bridge. Allan tried, and failed, to find a green coconut to get some refreshing coconut water, so we just went back across the bridge to the park. It was lit up with purple string lights. Back at the park, we walked around for a lap or two and happened to see the bridge put on a small light show with rainbow changing colors. We stood and watched with a little snack at the pretty lights before heading back to the car, our bed for the night. It was still pretty warm so hopefully it cools down and we can get some sleep.Read more