Brazil - Off The Beaten Track, In The Mountains

Although there were plenty of places to imbibe (yech!),


there were not too many of these




I'm not sure why, with being in the forested mountains, they would want to make a bench
out of reconstituted stone and make it look like wood


As with all the parks in Brazil, their main undergrowth/overgrowth is the giant bamboo



These had interesting green stripes

 

In two words: Cheap Labour.

 

Now I'm moving a couple of hundred miles back towards Rio and down the mountains to Petropolis (No! Not Metropolis! Just in case you're a Superman fan. ) and is known as the Imperial City.

Petropolis was named after Emperor Pedro II who decided to make it his summer home because of the much nicer climate. Being at an elevation of nearly 3,000ft it doesn't get the oppressive heat of Rio, 40 miles away. So, in the mid 1800's he built his summer palace there, on the farm that his father Pedro I owned, - it's now the Imperial Museum.

Lots of other aristocracy, and later, celebrities, intellectuals and artists moved there. It's now a city of a quarter of a million people and a popular tourist area for Brazilians, but not all that well known to foreigners.

The Museum is the main tourist attraction and, for Brazilians - and others, the small chalet house that was the home of Alberto Santos-Dumont should be a 'must visit'. "Who?" I hear you ask! More, later.

Just in case you're not sure where you are, they let you know.


This is just a small part of the Palace/Museum.


Photos are not allowed inside the rooms so I can't show you any of it's treasures and artifacts.

In order to preserve the marble and wooden flooring it's compulsory to wear slippers - provided for you. A lot of places around England insist of your shoes being covered and tend to give you plastic bag slip-ons (in a lot of places we've visited in Asia they make you take your shoes off, mainly at religious sites, and don't give you anything!).

These slippers are overshoes and you don't take your own shoes off first. They'll even put them on for you if you have difficulty bending. They're alright if you want to slide your feet along the floor (free polishing for them) but tend to fall off if you lift your foot.



The Emperor had a railway built to take him from Rio to his summer palace and, as it had quite a climb from the coast, it had to be a cog railway. A cog railway has a centre rail consisting of a toothed rack and the engine has a gear cog wheel that turns and locks into the teeth in the rack. Just like you see the wheel cogs in mechanical clocks and watches.

This was the engine. They tend to be built at an angle so that the engine is actually level as it travels. The steeper the hill the more of an angle the engine is built at.




They also have a large building with all the Imperial coaches

 

The grounds were extensive with a lot of walks, with benches along them and on many terraced layers. Apparently the trees and walks are lit up at night and are quite spectacular.








Although there were a lot of flower beds they were between plantings. The spring/summer flowering plants were finished and the next season hadn't started.

The hundreds of very large trees were covered in epiphytes

 

Alberto Santos-Dumont 1873-1932

A very interesting man and not well known in Europe.

@ARMANDII you may be interested in this man

We went to his chalet/house in Petropolis. It's very small, built on a steep hill just to show it can be done, and is now a museum.


He was an inventor and built and designed dirigibles and aircraft (plus a few other things, such as a heated shower) and was a keen astronomer.

There are many arguments who completed the first heavier than air flight. According to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, Santos was the first because their rules were that the plane had to take off under its own power. The Wright brothers initially used a launching rail and catapult and progressed to still using skids but it running on a dolly on a track. Santos just used wheels in 1906.

He was also instrumental in improving the engines that were used. Another invention instigated, but not made, by him was the man's wristwatch. He needed a time piece to check his performance whilst flying. In those days they only had pocket watches and he got Cartier to design something for him. Cartier still sell watches (and sunglasses) named after him.


This depicts him flying his award winning fixed wing, heavier than air '14bis' - and flying one of his dirigibles around the Eiffel Tower (it was an actual photo, in the Smithsonian, taken in Paris).

 

There are many streets named after him (they say it's thousands but I'm not sure about that), the airport in Rio, two cities and a crater on the moon are also named after him.

The inside of his house is very small with extremely steep stairs and each stair has an indentation to make it easier for people to climb them.


He had one of the first telephones in the city (the Emperor had the first one).


His invention of a heated shower, alcohol fuelled


And his steps that led up to his observatory

 

I'm putting in an application to the Brazilian Government to move in there, Shiney.!!!

You'd never get Ziggy out of there!!!

Do you think the Cheshire Council would let me do the same and build an Observatory on my roof???

Great pics, Shiney, and a very interesting place to visit.....I'd probably keep going back for a week so that I could enjoy the place to the full!!

Unfortunately, it's the same with most inventions and achievements. There's arguments about who actually invented radar, jet engines, first to fly under power and heavy than air. I just admire all those who paved the way to all the technical innovations that we have today and "take my hat off" to all of those pioneers!!

 

I'm not sure you'd need permission if it was built on the rear of your house . It's only a ladder and a work platform and doesn't extend above the roofline.

 

Oh, I was thinking of a sliding rotating roof for mine

 

You could always say it's a big chimney pot with a rotating weather vane.

 

Another interesting place to see is the Crystal Palace.

It was built by Count D'Eu in 1884 as a present for his wife Princess Isabel. It was inspired by them seeing the Crystal Palace in London that was built in 1851, but is just a fraction of the size.

(The London Crystal Palace was originally built in Hyde Park as a temporary structure to house a great exhibition and would have been pulled down afterwards! Instead, it was bought by a group of men and reconstructed in Sydenham and used as a magnificent museum and gardens. Sadly, it burnt down in 1936.)

It is now used for talks, meetings, concerts and celebrations (weddings etc.).



Around Christmas time it's used to celebrate the festival and the gardens have small stalls selling all kinds of crafts and there are displays of Christmas type decorations throughout the gardens. They follow the Brazilian civic pastime of using recycled waste to make Christmas decorations.







and the stalls follow through on the theme.