Plants

I love having flowers at home. They give so much life and energy to the room. The problem is how to care for them. I bought this red cyclamen just last week and it's barely surviving...

Something about Curitiba

Curitiba is located about 400 km southwest of Sao Paulo, in the state of Parana. There are about 1.5 million inhabitants. Most of these people are descendants of German, Italian, Swiss and Eastern European immigrants who settled in the latter half of the 19th centry.

Parana was created in 1853 after its separation from Sao Paulo state. The economy of Parana was based on pig farming and timber extraction in the early years. Later when there was a shortage of labor during the 19th century, the provincial government encouraged immigration. Settlers from Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland and Ukraine established communities and started to farm coffee, soybeans and erva mate (a type of tea).

Curitiba is the state capital of Parana. The city is famous for its mass transportation system and urban planning. Different types of buses run within city center and between suburbs (Each ride is R$1.8). The orange buses service the downtown areas, yellow buses run from downtown to suburbs and grey buses travel between suburbs without frequent stops. Roads are also designed to reduce traffic congestion. Central lanes in main streets in downtown are reserved for buses. Most of the downtown roads only allow one way traffic.

At 900m above sea level, the weather in Curitiba is quite unpredictable. It is not uncommon to have a beautiful sunny day in the morning with wind and rain storm at night(half an hour of heavy rain during mid day is not unusual). Winter normally starts in June and ends in September. Temperature can get down to 4 or 5 degrees celcius. Summers are not as warm as in Rio or Sao Paulo.

In terms of tourist attractions, there are not that many, I must say. A day or two is sufficient to see the highlights of Curitiba: Botanical garden, 24 hour street, Parque Bariqui etc. Tourist usually just stop by Curitiba on their way to Foz do Iguacu.

My knitting project .....finally

Six feet under

This is a picture that Sid took in a public washroom.

Travel Sites

I spent a lot of time today trying to organize a tour to Peru for me and Sid. There are so much information on the internet and I just didn't know where to start. (I should know better since we travelled quite a bit each year...) I guess I am a better "city tour" planner instead of a "country tour" planner. I have to say that our trips (Santiago, Rio, Foz da Iguazu, Buenos Aires) were very nicely planned - we went able to see most of the touristic points in the cities without being too rush - we spent just the right time in each place. But I was quite lost when I first started to research for this 1 to 2 weeks long trip in Peru.. probably because there are so much to see in Peru and we want to see them all!!!

After sitting in front of the computer for about half a day, I managed to email quite a few travel agencies and I am now waiting for their quotes.

I think I will just put a few good travel sites here to save some time in the future:

iexplore - Information on countries and cities. Search engine for tours.
tripadviser - Similar information as above with reviews from other tourists. Links to tour sites.
infohub - Search engine for tours from 1300 travel agencies.

My "office" and new creations

I haven't made any cards for over 2 months since I spent the past 1.5 months in Hong Kong busy going out, meeting friends, shopping etc. Yesterday, I spent about 2 hours in my "office" and came up with these 2 cards.
I have to say that I am quite lucky to have this apartment here. I use one of the bedrooms as my workshop (see below). I know I will miss this when we leave Brazil.