Words were floating on the breeze...

Hi everybody!

It's been some time since the last I was here. In fact, I'm just passing to drive the flies away from my blog

I'm studying hard, working hard, had some health problems but now I'm fine (who follows me on Facebook knows that) and... that's it.

Oh, next month I'm going to travel. Vacation! Yay!! I'm going to Salvador, a great city (the first capital of Brazil) full of History (and I love that) in the Northeast of Brazil.

I always wanted to go there and now I'm going to fulfill my dream!

Take care you all, I'll be back with more news soon!

We had the luck to find a Spanish restaurant in Fortaleza. I got mad to go there and we rode through the city to buy maps and so we could find the right street of the restaurant.

Sorry for the images, they were taken by mobile.


They have a very creative menu, I loved to see all in Spanish!







First we ordered a tortilla. A cod tortilla. Yummmy!







And a great Sangria to drink. Oh, and Francis had a grape juice. And I asked him why he ordered a grape juice if it's the same???





The main dish, of course I had to order a paella. The most traditional Spanish dish! We ordered the Paella Valenciana.




And the dish was done! Voila!






The restaurant is very small but very cozy and the food... hmmmmmm... amazing! Not so cheap, but it worth!
The decoration is very typical and the owner, Suzana, was very nice!









It's a restaurant that really worth to try! Cheers!!!

Sorry for the late, but I was preparing myself to do this blog, which I guess is the best I did so far. I wanted to do it with love and caring because it represents too much for me.

I can say with no doubt that the best part in travel is when we have the chance to visit historical places. Me and Francis love to do this kind of trip.

In Fortaleza even having beaches for all over the places we went, we didn't loose the opportuninty to visit some magical places and the one we liked most was the house of José de Alencar.

José de Alencar is a famous brazilian writer who was born in 1829 in the city of Messejana, which is now a part of Fortaleza (like a district). You can know more about him here.

His most famous romance was "Iracema" which is the story of a beautiful brazilian indian that felt in love with a portuguese, and they had a beautiful love and a child. She had to scape from her tribe and he was murder for this. Some Historians say that this portuguese was Martim Soares Moreno, the same that was the founder of Fortaleza. If he really was Iracema's love nobody can proove it.

Well, José de Alencar's house still exists and we visited it. He had to! You know that magical places you visit and looks like you feel as you were really there?? Yes, this is one of these places.

The house is part of like a small farm with about 38ha in the XIX century. Now it has just 7ha. But the house is very preserved and there is another house which was built in the 70's by one of ours Presidents: Castelo Branco (José de Alencar was his third cousin) and in his mandate he realized that the city was growing fast and the farm was disappearing. So he took the decision to donate the farm to the Federal University, and the University maintain the house and a museum there. The museum was built as an old house of the century XIX. The same style. When you got there you first imagine it is all part of the original farm, but it is not. The museum was built in the 70's and is maintened till these days.




In this building there are 3 parts to see. First an exposition about the book Iracema. The whole history is told in draws by a local artist. The second one tells about the history of the lace in Brazil. Its influences and origins. And the third and the one who took most my attention was the part where is the history of the black slaves in Ceará. Ceará was the first state in Brazil to get the slaves in freedom. But the only person who really studied them in a psychologic view was an Anthropologist called Arthur Ramos. Many of the pieces showed there were from his personal collection. And he was speciallized in afro-descending subjects.







The image below got me totally shocked. I knew that the Afrikan slaves got here in South America in full ships but in this image we have a concrete idea how they were put and how they'd come in the trip which lasted at least 2 months to arrive in Brazil. They were put lying down, one next other, and the ones who couldn't lay down, they would travel sitted down.






Many stuff that were used with the slaves.







This one above was probably used to put around the slave's waist to make him pull carts full of stuffs, as a horse.

The other below was used in the around the slave's neck as a way to punish him.



You feel shocked, you feel sad... specially to us, Brazilian people, this is a very sad and disgraceful part of our History. Our country was built by the slaves and all that we have now, all our treasures and richnesses we own them! In less then 150 years, about more than 2 million of slaves were caught in many parts of Afrika and were brought to Brazil to work to portugueses mainly. About 2/3 of the population in Brazil were slaves. The 3rd part were portugueses who came here to extract diamonds, gold and other stuff to send to Portugal.





In the images above, we can see the drums slaves used to make their religious rituals. It was prohibited for a long time and who was caught doing this, were tortured and arrested. Their religions were not allowed by the Catholic Church. That is the reason why many people associate their religion to bad things, mainly with to the devil and things like that. But that is not true.

The Afrikan religions which came to Brazil and mixed with Catholicism and with the Indians religion were the following:

1 - CAMDOMBLÉ: In Afrikan it means 'dance' and in Brazil it was used to make rituals to the Afrikan Gods, or 'Orixás'. It shows superficial Catholics characteristics.

2 - MACUMBA: It's showed as the rituals of the black magic, voodoos and 'despachos' which are the offers to the Gods.

3 - PAJELANÇA: It's the mixed Afrikan rituals with the Indian rituals.

4 - UMBANDA: This religion was created in 1940 as a way to accpet the Afrikan religions in Brazil by the Catholic Church. As a way to be more 'human' and so they allowed to the Afrikan people and their descending ones to have their rituals, but just with th condition that the Afrikan Gods would have a Catholic Saint as a corresponding. All the Afrikan Gods have a Saint, for example, Iemanjá, which is the Goddess of the Seas and Oceans, its corresponding in Catholicism is the Great Mother of Seafaring (Catholicism always like to have many names to the same person, the Jesus' mother), and Oxóssi is Saint Sebastian... and so on.

In the new album I'm just doing right now, you can see more pictures and understand more about this and others curiosities. I just did an album separated from the other one of my honeymoon because I guessed better to make this one to the History of Brazil. The new album is called José de Alencar's House and I'm sure you'll like it.

Well, following our visiting there we saw many other stuff as for example, a device of suger cane in ruins. In that age was very common to have one in the houses because cane was (and still is some regions till now) a very common plantation and they used to use it for their own benefits and of course to export to Portugal.








After this we could see the small house not so far from the device. It's incredible how you can transportate yourself into the years and come back to that age. I was in ecstasy!!



First we had this amazing view of that giant mango tree. That's super! That tree must have almost 300 years old. You have no idea of how tall it is.



Then, the house. It's a small house but still very preserved. And I couldn't loose this photo! By the way, was Francis' idea!





The house has only one living room and 2 bedrooms (very, very small) and a kitchen. Well, it can't be called as a kitchen but just a place to the stove, the old stoves, you know, with firewood.



It was a very special place and it was the best so far, we visited in Fortaleza.

Please, visit the album to see more! Thank you for reading.

In the Tuesday, after have passed all the last day in the excursion, we decided to stay in the Praia do Futuro (Future Beach) where our apartment was. My sister told us to take care because this beach was a bit 'violent', the tide and waves, etc. I was a bit afraid but after get into the sea I saw that she was wrong... Francis said that this beach was only dangerous to people under 1,60m short and we are higher than 1.60 we were fine there! (My sister wanted to kill us)

The beach itself is very nice, beautiful and had a lot of space to stay. Even having many bars there were too much sand to enjoy! The residents told us to take care about the thieves, because unfortunately Future Beach is the beach where tourists prefer to stay, it has a better structure to tourists and so, thieves are always watching people. But in the bars you have all the structure you need. You have a very clean bathroom, a restaurant (very nice and cheap) you have the 'straw hats' as we call in Brazil, which is a kind of mini-bar with a roof made of straw and you can stay very near the sea and appreciate the landscape. And also, you have a personal safe in all the mini-bars and so you can go take your shower and keep your things safe while you're enjoying the waves!














We spent the morning in the beach and we decided to take a look in the city and visit some nice places to tourists, like the Central Market, where you have 3 floors of hundreds of stores to buy stuff. Clothes, food, shoes, handcraft, typical food, hadcrafted clothes, and many other kind of things. If you don't control yourself, you go mad!! Many things and cheap??? Of course you want to get'em all!!!!





The picture above we took from another place in front of the market. The old fort, in fact, the first fort that Fortaleza had. The capital of the state wasn't Fortaleza, but a small near city called Aquiraz. But for geographic and strategic reasons, the govenment moved the capital to Fortaleza and built this fort, which today is a kind headquarter.











The city of Fortaleza as the history says, was created by the portuguese Martins Soares Moreno in the year 1612. This portuguese is portraited in the novel of the brazilian writer José de Alencar, and the novel tells about the romance with a local indian, called Iracema.





What paied our attention to this place was the history of Bárbara de Alencar, which was the gradma of José de Alencar and was arrested and was kept in this fort for years. She was the first prisoner by politic reasons in Brazil and her cell was a shame.

First, we had to down the stairs and get into a small hall. Which was smaller and smaller. We couldn't be standing there.











That was the 'hole' she passed long years. She got the anisty by writting a letter with her own blood. Impressive. She could only be laying down, she couldn't use bathroom... you can imagine how it was horrable! I was in shock.





Unfortunately the museum they have in the fort was not opened, they were doing a reform. For more photos see the album, please