The Arrival in Brasilia

Breakfast at the hotel in Olinda included a tapioca pancake com queixo and sumo de acerola.
A taxi took me to Recife Airport which I left at 11.30 on a LATAM A321 , arriving in Brasilia at 14.00 to be met by Luis, my guide. On the drive to the hotel, there was a lot of open space between occasional buildings.
I stayed at the Brasilia Palace Hotel, the second building built after the nearby Palacio da Alvorada, the Presidential Palace. It was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and includes artworks by Athos Bulcao. It was opened in 1958 but badly damaged by fire in 1978 before reopening in 2006. My bedroom looked across to the 5-star Royal Tulip Hotel which was used by foreign dignitaries visiting Brasilia.
Building a capital away from the coast at Rio was advised by a British sea captain who was escorting the Portuguese royal family into exile during the Peninsular War. The site of present-day Brasilia was designated to be the new capital in 1890 but nothing was done until President Kubitschek bit the bullet in 1956 and commissioned Oscar Niemeyer, the architect, together with Lucio Costa, the urban planner, and Burle Marx, the landscape architect, to design Brasilia which was constructed in four years by 1960. The city has expanded to include satellite cities with the total population now being between two and three million.
I walked to a bar on Lake Paranoa, passing a capybara. The lake is a large artificial lake created by damming the Paranoa River in order to create some humidity in a generally arid region as well as the opportunities for fishing and water sports for the population.
Back at the hotel, I had dinner at Oscar's. All the hotel information was on a QR code.
There was light rain in the evening at the start of the rainy season and it was cooler than the coast, the altitude being 1000m.Read more