Petropolis - March 22nd

Today we leave Teresopolis and go to Petropoils.  All these ‘opolis’ places can get a bit confusing, but they seem to be quite popular here.  I haven’t found Metropolis yet, but if we do then we will pay Superman a visit.  For the moment Petropolis is the closest we will get to it.

Because they are so close, and because we like hanging around our nice hotel in Teresopolis, we are only getting the midday bus, so we have a leisurely breakfast, pack, and walk down to the bus station.  The walk downhill from our hotel is almost as bad with the backpacks on as walking up was.  The bus journey had some really good views of the mountains, but it was so twisty and hilly that both of us were feeling a little queasy when we go to Petropolis.  The bus station for the town is about 10km from downtown (like Teresopolis this is a city built along a long valley so it is long but not very wide), so we then had to get a taxi to our hotel.  Despite it being only a 2 hour trip we were quite exhausted by the time we got there.  The new hotel was every bit as nice as the last one, maybe even nicer, but it is costing a bit more.

We decide to begin our exploration of Petropolis immediately, and we go to the old imperial palace where the Brazilian royal family used to spend summer.  Petropolis is much more of an old imperial city than Teresopolis, and better preserved.  Whether because they didn’t have much money (compared to European monarchies of the time) or whether they deliberately avoided being ostentatious the palace and its furnishings were not too grand, but the imperial crown with all its jewels was.  After visiting the palace, we visited the cathedral to see where the last king, queen and princess were buried.

Once the first part of our sightseeing was complete we walked along some of the shopping streets in the town.  Petropolis is a large enough town, and it has a lot of students and weekend visitors, but the shopping isn’t great.  Because we had a late breakfast, and no real lunch after the bus (due to queasiness) we choose to have an early dinner in an Italian restaurant, although amazingly at 6pm we weren’t the only diners, a record for South America.