RECIFE

Casa da Cultura

One of Recife's squares

Recife, or as it is apparently known, the Venice of South America.  Well what can I say!  The port lecturer gave us dire warnings about crime being rife, not to wear jewellery, take expensive cameras etc, and as there were no spaces on the organised tours, we had to take the shuttle bus into the city centre and find our own way around.

But I’m jumping ahead here – the first thing we noticed was the area in which we docked – a very non-attractive container area!  There were also hundreds of flies – and a horrible smell.

After breakfast we boarded the shuttle bus for the 15-minute journey into town.  We were dropped off at the Casa da Cultura – Cultural Centre – a converted prison, whose cells were now hundreds of little craft shops.  But rather than look around there first, we tried to find our way to an area that wasn’t a street market or little stalls selling goldfish dangling in plastic bottles! 

We wandered up and down streets, taking some photographs of churches, street scenes etc, but after 2 hours, in a temperature of a very humid 32c, we called it a day, and made our way back to the Cultural Centre to get the shuttle back to the ship for lunch.  The Cultural Centre was, in its way, very attractive, with good quality items for sale, but we kept our hands in our pockets and all we spent was 4 Reals  (about £1.30) on 2 cans of Coca Cola!

Not a very attractive city at all.

Well the forecast was wrong, it didn’t rain and the ship sailed for Rio de Janeiro at 1800.