Brazil Trip: My Favorite Foods (and Drink)

 Romeo and Juliet, minus the Juliet

What's travel without the discovery of new foods? My favorites from the trip are specific to Minas Gerais: 1.) Pão de queijo (aka cheese bread): tiny rolls served fresh from the oven with a dollop of melted cheese baked inside, 2.) Tutu à Mineira: mashed cooked beans, served hot alongside rice and fresh vegetables, 3.) Romeo and Juliet, a dessert consisting of a wedge of mild cheese served with guava puree and dulce de leche, and 4.) Fried coconut served from a street cart: freshly fried and still piping hot. It's called beijo-something, which translates to hot kiss. Mmmm.

Pão de queijo

Tutu à Mineira

Fried Coconut


My favorite drink, of course, was the caipirinha, the country's most famous cocktail, made with cachaça and muddled sugar and limes.

Brazil Trip: A Lovely Hotel

In Ouro Preto I was treated to a stay at the Solar do Rosário, a 170-year-old, 41-room hotel that I became absolutely enchanted by. There are open entryways and windows around every corner, and tons of places to escape—little tables, chaises, daybeds—both indoors and out. The place is a sanctuary for secluded romance—unfortunately, I was traveling solo!

The hotel overlooks Nossa Senhora do Rosário (Rosário Church), one of the most interesting examples of the local Brazilian Baroque architecture because of its back-story: it was finished in 1792 after 30 years of construction by slaves who needed a safe haven for worshiping. 

But the best part is rooms here go for 400 reais, which (right now) is about $217 USD. Now that's affordable luxury.

Brazil Trip: Inhotim, An Art Lover's Paradise

The attraction that's garnered the most international attention in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in recent years is the Instituto Cultural Inhotim, a sprawling contemporary art museum that's been set up on 3,000 acres of lush, landscaped earth.

I spent a couple of hours there. But you could spend days. 

And, according to the latest issue of Budget Travel, it's the trip of a lifetime.

My two favorite installations: The Forty Part Motet, by Janet Cardiff; and Através by Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles. The Forty Part Motet is an open-air room in which forty speakers, raised to average human height, are placed in large circle. Each plays a singular voice. The collective sound is that of “Spem in Alium," a choral composition written by Thomas Tallis in 1573. Hearing each voice clearly as you walk around the room in front of each speaker, then standing in the middle and hearing it as a whole is staggering. The sound—resonating from the breezy sun-filled white room—is almost empyreal. I filmed it on my Flip: the video is shaky but the sound is good!

As much as Motet is auditory, Através is visual. It's also interactive. Visitors are invited to enter the installation by walking on the glass shards that coat the floor. Those shards (yes, I walked on them—in shoes) are one of the many barriers you're meant to cross as you make your way to the center of the installation, a huge cellophane ball (other hurdles include barbed wire and a shower curtain). See my video of the docent explaining it here.

Brazil Trip: Undiscovered Ouro Preto

Baroque architecture. Simple, sherbert-colored houses dotting the hillside. Passport (and visa) required. . .

Last week I was in the Minas Gerais state of Brazil, in the southeast part of the country, about 400 miles north of Sao Paolo. Before I was invited on the trip I had never heard of it, even though it's anchored by Brazil's third largest city, Belo Horizonte. But that's what makes it great: the tourists flock to buzzing Sao Paulo and Rio, leaving this place untrammelled and wholly authentic. (Practice your Portuguese, or travel with a guide!)

Minas Gerais literally mean general mines. The cities here sprouted up in the 1700s after the discovery of gold. The economy was built on mining; and sparkling Baroque churches soon became showpieces of the local bounty. Though flying in and out of the capital city of Belo Horizonte (translation: beautiful horizon) gave me the chance to tour the city, my favorite part of the trip was the old mining village of Ouro Preto, where many of those churches still stand.