Restaurante Maria do Peixe

Maria's restaurant of fish. This is Tim's favorite restuarant and now I truly understand why!! Tim has been talking about this restuarant for as long as we had been planning this trip. Our old co-worker Dirk was jealous to hear we were going to eat at Maria's. James called in one hour before we wanted to eat. Lucy Maria begins cooking and as soon as you get there you are served. The menu is fresh fish of her choice. The outside of the restuarant.
The inside was beautiful, fully open to the outdoors. Tiki is the wood of choice here and it is everywhere.
The tables were neatly arranged. Tim loved the chairs as they were quite comfortable and very pretty.

Tim, super excited waiting for lunch! After the first bite Tim said "ah just like how I remember it" Truly amazing!I took this picture thinking all the food had been served but I was wrong they brought several more plates. We had fresh fish cooked two different ways, rice, beans, tomatoes, potato salad, and a few other things I did not know. The hot sauce is aged in a barrel for 1 yr and man, it is hot!
The chef is Lucy Maria the daughter of Maria. Maria had retired. She was so cute!! She came out and greeted every table after the meal was served.

Coca Light, por favor

The coca cola light is amazing here! They use a different kind of sugar and it rocks!

A day in the life of a Brasilian Mango

One of our growers is packing mangos for Europe. They were kind enough to give us a tour. Below the workers are cutting the stems and placing them stem down on the line. The mangos drop into a water tank to clean them of any particles and then they move on down the line.

Next they pass through a machine that dips them in wax. It also sorts them by the blush color and weights them in order to achieve a very uniformed carton.
Once they are sorted they drop into a line, where the worker handles just that size and blush shade. This guy is then packing them into the cartons to ship.
This is the start of his pallet. It will be around 6 feet tall when it is finished.
For the tour we had to wear tight white shirts (not tight on the locals) and hair nets as they are GAP certified. There were no pictures taken of this...

My little slice of the palace

The Petrolina Palace hotel is like nothing at all I have stayed at before. As Dad would put it "this is not a place Oergel women would stay." Thankfully Tim had warned me that you have to walk down a very long hall to get to your room and it has sensor lighting along the way. I have the room at the very, very end of this hallway. As you walk the lights in front of you turn on and the lights behind you gradually turn off. Once at your room you have to get your key in the door and open kind of quickly or the lights go off. It has taken me the last two days to finally get into the room before the lights go off. I imagine I look like a chicken flapping me wings frantically trying to turn them back on with my key stuck in the door! Yesterday morning Tim broke his key off in the door of his room... Getting closer. See how it is lighting up along the way.

I am lucky to have a suite. This is my front room. No outlets in this room so my computer is plugged into the only outlet in the bedroom.

My room. There is no clock so I use my cellphone as an alarm clock. This probably is because once in your room to get your own lights to work along with the air conditioning you must put your key in a slot next to the door.
So to recap I walk down the long long hall like a chicken flapping my wings then throw open the door. Slid my key into the slot to get the lights on then quickly take it out of the slot and lock the door from the inside all before the interior lights go off.

I am happy to report I am coordinated enough to do this!! Wow, I am good or what!

The road to Petrolina...

Yes, my friend that is a donkey hanging out on the side of the road. They are everywhere, I tell you!
Get your hmmm melons, here??
Horse and cart outside of the main fruit market. We passed quite a few along the way to the farms.
This was the old train depot, built in the 1800s.

The main bridge in town.. We haven't seen a train on the center tracks yet, and personally I hope we never do as it will be a tight squeeze! They have been upgrading the bridge for the last 10 years. All the work is done by hand.


Petrolina Palace, our home for the next three days. I will take pictures of the inside tonight. Let's just say it is a bit creepy!
Oh, and these are the local horses and donkeys that chill in the lot next to our hotel.

Toto, this doesn't look like home...

After 48 hours of traveling, I have finally made it to Petrolina, Brasil!

Sunday Tim and I landed in Sao Paulo. We had roughly 10 hours before our connecting flight so we checked in the transfer hotel, which is a Marriott close to the airport that you can rent a day room. The hotel helped us set up a driving tour of the city with Pa'. He was super nice and showed us as much of the city as possible in three hours. Sao Paulo can be dangerous so we only got out the car once for a picture in front of the football staduim. Pa' was very proud of this hometeam! The view out my window at the transfer hotel in Sao Paulo

Football stadium, holds roughly 80,000 people!Sao Paulo is home to over 34 million people. Most of the skyscrapers were apartments not office buildings.
Old and new mixed throughout the city.The hotel below was shaped like a giant boat. Sort of a modern Noah's ark!

This statue was given to the city but neither Tim nor I could understand Pa' and who gave it to them. We had a wonderful tour that put us back at the airport for our flight to Petrolina... Monday we start our meetings bright and early.

The Nation's Capital (just not ours)

Well, I have never been to Washington DC, never seen the White House, and I've never seen Congress but now I can say I have at least seen one capital in person. I spent the weekend in Ottawa and I had a few hours to kill before my flight today. It's amazing the similarities between here and Seattle, some 2500 miles away.

I first strolled along the street my hotel was on. It is called the Byward Market and if you put a cover over it, you could name it Pike Place Market. There were lots of vendors set up with temporary and semi-permanent stands selling flowers, trinkets, and clothing. The biggest change, of course, was instead of fish vendors everywhere, it was people hawking real Canadian maple syrup.

I walked a few more blocks past the Canadian Revenue Agency national headquarters (their version of the IRS I assume) and the U.S. Embassy and looked at the Rideau Canal Ottawa Locks. Reminded me quite a bit of Ballard.

After I passed the locks, I walked up to the parliament building and got there just at Noon. This was very interesting because their clock tower has a huge bell and chimes that played for almost 15 minutes. You can walk right up to the building and sign up for a tour without a second thought. I'm sure it's much different back in the states with background checks required weeks or months in advance.

As you walk around the parliament building, hidden behind is the Library of Parliament, a very unique attachment and a little area called the "stray cats of the hill". The little fenced off area had several cats, dozens of squirrels and a raccoon living there. I can only attach a picture of the sign because I couldn't possibly expect to do it justice with my description:

Just behind the parliament building is a cliff that overlooks the water and beyond to the french speaking side of the city. I took many great pictures but here are two of my favorites:

As I headed back to get my car, I stumbled upon the Canadian Tulip festival. The tulips were beautiful although from what I hear, the festival was laughable when compared to it's counterpart back in Washington.

These thoughts of Washington remind me of how much I am ready to be home back in the Great Northwest and, wouldn't you know it, they are calling my flight. Hope you've enjoyed my little tour of central Ottawa and I'll see you soon!!

First sewing project: Complete!!

We have 7 pregnant friends all due this summer/fall! I decided I wanted to give something handmade. So I set out looking for a good project and found burp clothes on handmade by jill blog! They were super easy and I feel they are good enough to give. I hope to make bibs next then blankets then if I am really gunho, I want to make dolls again from jill's blog. Totally recommend her blog for inspiration! If I lived in NYK I would totally want to be her friend!!

Today Colby is delivering our first gift to Seth and Stacie who are expecting a baby girl at the end of May! PS I think Madeline is the best children's book series ever!!