The Passing Stranger

BOA VIAGEM!

2007-01-13T16:43:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody. So these are some pictures from our trip to Brasil. They are posted in reverse chronological order....so scroll down and start with the pictures of New York city. Okay? Good. Oh, and I apologize for any spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors. Adios............

2007-01-13T16:08:00.000-08:00

Maracana. Did I mention we went to a soccer game in Rio? We did. And those are fireworks inside the stadium.

2007-01-13T16:05:00.000-08:00

some extras i had to squeeze in

2007-01-13T16:04:00.000-08:00

A few more shots of the the park across from the hotel in Belo Horizonte.

2007-01-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

This is known as a "Chicken Dollar."

2007-01-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

Watching futbol (CAM) play on TV the day after the wedding. After they won, the city went nuts for about 6 hours.

The End

2007-01-13T15:54:00.000-08:00

So that is that. After the wedding Sara and I spend the next day with Taci's family. They didn't speak much English and we spoke almost no Portuguese, but we had a great time with them.

2007-01-13T15:53:00.001-08:00

The Bride and Groom

2007-01-13T15:51:00.000-08:00

Dave and Mother

2007-01-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

Reminds me of the Godfather for some reason.

2007-01-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

3:01am

2007-01-13T15:48:00.000-08:00

3am

2007-01-13T15:44:00.000-08:00

Dave and Taci

2007-01-13T15:42:00.000-08:00

The church where Dave and Taci were married.

2007-01-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

Wher are our Tommy guns?

2007-01-13T15:13:00.000-08:00

Ryan writing in the log. He better be writing a masterpiece, seeing as he is a PhD in Literature...or something.

2007-01-13T15:11:00.000-08:00

Thats just weird. But there's that award winning smile. Thanks P.

HOLY MATRIMONY!

2007-01-13T15:06:00.000-08:00

We finally get to the wedding, the reason we all came. Great wedding between two great people...It started at 9:00PM and ended sometime early the next morning....

2007-01-13T14:55:00.000-08:00

Water!!!!!! Water is good for life.

2007-01-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

Walking around in the mines.

2007-01-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

Not sure if a warning is really necessary at this point.

2007-01-13T14:26:00.000-08:00

Alright. Here we are at Mina da Passagem, the largest open-to-visit gold mine in the world. It goes 120 meters. And its been around since the eighteenth century. Down we went.....

2007-01-13T14:18:00.000-08:00

Trip to the mines in Ouro Preto. Notice the restaurant sign, "self service." a.k.a. buffett

2007-01-13T14:16:00.000-08:00

Inside Senhora Nossa do Pilar

2007-01-13T14:11:00.000-08:00

Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Pilar, 1731.........we walked around the inside of this church. They forgot to check my camera, so I snapped a few photos....discretely

2007-01-13T13:58:00.000-08:00

Igreja de Sao Fransisco Assis

2007-01-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

another igreja............Sara going to see the wizard. The wonderful Wizard of Oz.

2007-01-13T13:45:00.000-08:00

Igreja de São José....one of the many beautiful churches around Ouro Preto

2007-01-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

Me, Dave, Dusty, Joel, Eric, and Casey

2007-01-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

Sara on a leisurely 45 degree stroll...

2007-01-13T12:06:00.000-08:00

Ouro Preto

Ouro Preto..."Black Gold"

2007-01-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

We did some site seeing in and around Belo Horizonte the next couple of days. We went to an old colonial mining city about 100km outside of Belo called Ouro Preto. Very cool place. It was founded in the late 17th century and was the capital of Minas Gerais before Belo Horizonte. Anyway, we went and visited some of the mines and walked around the town. Thats enough talking from me.

2007-01-09T22:22:00.000-08:00

More views from the hotel. The one on the bottom is a view from Dusty's suite.

2007-01-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

Some more views from the room

2007-01-09T22:09:00.000-08:00

This is a view from our window at the hotel we stayed in in Belo Horizonte. Its the municipal park.

2007-01-07T15:33:00.000-08:00

Jungles and vehicles. That's a nice fern.

2007-01-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

Sara and I took a bus from Rio to Belo Horizonte. It was about a six hour ride, the first two were through the mountains. The scenery was beautiful, unfortunately it was hard to get good pictures through the windows. Anyway, the bus was surprisingly comfortable, our seats laid back nearly flat.......oh , so this was the stop where we refueled and ate lunch.

I love Belo Horizonte radically

2007-01-06T22:43:00.000-08:00

Okay. So after about five days in Rio, we all went to Taci's hometown, Belo Horizonte. See it on the map? Grrreat. Anyway, its the third largest city in Brasil and is the capital of Minas Gerais. The logo above was pretty popular around the city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belo_Horizonte

2007-01-06T22:39:00.000-08:00

Us on top of Sugar Loaf.

2007-01-06T22:38:00.000-08:00

From the top... again

2007-01-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

Top of Sugar Loaf

2007-01-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

Beach view from the top of Sugar Loaf

2007-01-06T22:29:00.000-08:00

Sugar Loaf

2007-01-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

MORE!

2007-01-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

Finally. You can still see his hand though...

2007-01-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

This was a little funny. I was trying to get a nice picture of Sara in front of the statue but this goofy guy stood behind her like this for probably three minutes.

2007-01-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

Cristo Redentor

Corcovado and Sugar Loaf

2007-01-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

Sara and I had a day of sightseeing a day after the rest of the group. She had a bit of a fever so she spent one day in bed. By the next day she felt much better and we headed out to Sugar Loaf Mountain and Corcovado. Corcovado is the mountain/hill that has a large statue of Christ- "Cristo Redentor." It was a beautiful day with clear skies so we had some great views. After Corcovado, we went to Sugar Loaf mountain and rode cable cars.

2007-01-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

top: Beware of monkeys!
bottom: monkeys

2007-01-06T14:03:00.000-08:00

Red trashcan (for trash)

2007-01-06T13:59:00.000-08:00

More yellow cabs. Most of the cars were smaller models. Lots of ethanol cars.

2007-01-06T13:55:00.000-08:00

Some locals. A market, soccer in the park, groceries. I hope #16 didn;t think I was following him.

2007-01-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

So the first thing I did when we got to our hotel was go across the street to a barbershop barbershop. I spoke no Portuguese, and neither did Francesa the barber. But I sat in the chair, and like second nature he went to work. I squirmed a little when he grabbed the straight blade and made for my eyebrows, but it turned out for the best..."when in Brasil"

Anyway, the cut was great. He was the most meticulous barber I've ever been to, but when he finished he combed my hair like I was five years old. I looked like Jerry Seinfeld after an Enzo cut. I went into the hotel to get Sara, recombed my locks, and we went back out for some food. However, we past the barber shop and the way and Enzo noticed that I had ruined his masterpiece. He gave me a serious crook eye.

2007-01-06T13:38:00.000-08:00

top: The strip along the Copacabana. bottom: I was apparently supposed to pay for this photo. A shaggy looking guy started walking toward me right after. We left.

2007-01-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

From the hotel terrace, again. You can see the Christ in the bottom one if you strain. But I get ahead of myself.

2007-01-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Greg....mulling over things.

2007-01-06T13:22:00.000-08:00

Sara. Hi Sara. What a beautiful smile. See the glow of pregnancy? Its there (not to be confused with the streaks due to bad photography).

2007-01-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

From the hotel terrace. The top one is sunset, the bottom sunrise, I think. Scratch that, we never woke that early.

2007-01-06T13:09:00.000-08:00

View from our balcony towards the East. Is that DirectTV?

2007-01-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

These two are from our balcony too. These are apartments across the street. You couldn't really see the street because of the the trees lining it. Pretty neat.

2007-01-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

The hotel across the street (also from the balcony). We did a lot of people watching- but not in a spooky psycho kind of way.

2007-01-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

or is this one from our balcony??...I forget. But this is Copacabana beach (right) and Ipanema (left)

2007-01-06T12:33:00.000-08:00

This is taken from our balcony at our hotel. Our hotel was about 2 blocks from the Copacabana beach, which is well.....you'll see...below

2007-01-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

Finally we made it to Brasil. We flew into Sao Paulo and then went from there to Rio de Janeiro. The airports were surprisingly empty in both cities.

2007-01-06T12:07:00.000-08:00

(left to right) Sara. Jared.

2007-01-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

Mmmmm. NY pizza from Guido's. Actually I don't know what what the name of the tiny establishment was, but that might be a good guess.

2007-01-06T12:02:00.000-08:00

Madam Tussauds. No, we didn't go. I told you already! We only had thirty minutes. Geez.

2007-01-06T12:01:00.000-08:00

I had to take a picture of a yellow cab. We would take too many of these over the next two weeks.

2007-01-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Reuters! I should have got the breaking news. It looks smoky for some reason.

2007-01-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

This was my first dizzying impression of NYC. Brilliant.

2007-01-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

The subway finally arrived. It was like a shimmering silver stallion in the NY street lights.

2007-01-06T11:39:00.000-08:00

This is the subway station we took after getting off the Airtrain. It was pretty deserted when we were there.

NEW YORK!

2007-01-05T20:30:00.000-08:00

Our first was New York City. We had never been before, so we took advantage of a six hour layover to ride the subway to Times Square. We had about an hour to walk around, eat pizza from a hole-in-the-wallpizzeria, and buy a couple big apple T-shirts. Oh, and Sara got a pretzel. After catching the wrong subway and underestimating our travel time, we arrived at JFK two minutes before our international flight was scheduled to leave. That's punctuality.

Blah

2006-03-08T16:13:00.000-08:00

Blah Blah blah? Blah blah....blah. Errr, blah blah.

YOSEMITE in WINTER

2006-03-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

Hello all..........
Sara and I recently took a weekend trip to Yosemite National Park. It was covered in snow and was incredible. Probably one of the most beautiful places I've been. We stayed in Wawona and snowboarded at Badger Pass (a 15 minute drive from our place). Much of the park is either closed or inaccessible during the winter, but what we saw was amazing. We are going to try to go camping there during the summer sometime. Anyway, enjoy---- I hope all is well, if not - be patient, it'll get better-

2006-03-02T22:47:00.000-08:00

us at Mariposa Sequoia Grove

2006-03-02T22:46:00.000-08:00

a close......too close? sorry

2006-03-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

sara by the stream

2006-03-02T22:44:00.001-08:00

stream

2006-03-02T22:44:00.000-08:00

this was hidden away in the woods....all sorts of little surprises like this one

2006-03-02T22:43:00.000-08:00

snow

2006-03-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

the cliff

2006-03-02T22:41:00.001-08:00

fallen tree

2006-03-02T22:41:00.000-08:00

nice little cliff.....

2006-03-02T22:39:00.000-08:00

sara and her new glasses

2006-03-02T19:59:00.000-08:00

Badger Pass Lifts

2006-03-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

Boarding at Bager Pass....the only slopes in Yosemite...you can see the entire lodge here. It was nice and low key.

2006-03-02T19:57:00.000-08:00

after a hard days work

2006-03-02T19:56:00.000-08:00

late in the day...sara gettin' XTREME!!!!!

2006-03-02T19:55:00.001-08:00

she's wicked bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-03-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

kooky

2006-03-02T19:54:00.000-08:00

imagine this...but sped up...and downhill

2006-03-02T19:53:00.000-08:00

the slopes

2006-03-02T19:51:00.001-08:00

this is how we'll get around for the next few photographs

2006-03-02T19:51:00.000-08:00

trees...we like trees!

2006-03-02T19:50:00.000-08:00

green tree

2006-03-02T19:49:00.001-08:00

green tree

2006-03-02T19:49:00.000-08:00

uphill in the snow

2006-03-02T19:48:00.001-08:00

green tree!

2006-03-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

the trees were very colourful