Beagá – Terça Edição

Sept 19, 2009

Oi!

De retour de notre long week-end de gringos ponctué de balades, shopping et festins bien arrosés à Tiradentes, nous avons croulé sous la chaleur toute la semaine, alors que nous accueillions notre première visiteuse, arrivée tout droit du Québec! Un second paquet est arrivé vendredi, et nous avons donc parmi nous...Méli et Tina!

Au programme: visite de la ville, de ses botecos..., atelier d'empenadas, de mosaïque et Happy Hour mémorable vendredi pour célébrer la fin de semaine, l'arrivée des filles et celle prochaine du...printemps! C'est effectivement le dernier week-end d'hiver à Beagá...

Nous prenons la route de Rio lundi pour toute la semaine...la plage d'Ipanema et tant d'autres nous y attendent...et Mélissa nous a déjà chanté CO-PA---CO-PA-CA-BA-NA toute la semaine...On vous envoie le best of au retour!

Até logo, e abraços!

Nota Bene: Plein de nouvelles photos dans notre album à gauche...

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Oi!

Back from our long gringos week-end in Tiradentes made of touring, shopping and food & alcohol orgies, we went through a really hot week in Beagá, while we had our first visitor, arrived straight from Quebec! A second parcel arrived last Friday, and we now have Méli and Tina in Beagá!

We've been visiting the city and its botecos, learned the art of the making of empenadas, of ceramics and finished the week with a memorable Happy Hour to celebrate the end of the week, the arrival of the girls and soon the spring!

We are off to Rio on Monday where Ipanema Beach and so much more are waiting for us...Melissa has been singing CO-PA---CO-PA-CA-BA-NA all week...We'll be posting the best of as soon as we're back!

Até logo, e abraços!

Nota Bene: Plenty of new pictures in our album on the left hand side...

Beagá – Segunda Edição

Sept 3, 2009

Oi!

Nos nouvelles ont changé de format depuis la Primeira Edição...

Donc bienvenue sur « A novela de Beagá » !

Cela fait effectivement plusieurs semaines que nous n'avions pas donné de nouvelles... Bien occupés à « socialiser », chercher un nouvel appart' et visiter les alentours de Beagá. Bref, à nous installer, et d'une certaine manière à s'intégrer!

Nous avons déménagé récemment...après quelques péripéties: disons que louer un appartement à Beagá, bien que largement aidés par le projet, s'est avéré un tantinet plus compliqué que d'en acheter un à Montréal! On vous passe les détails... Mais voyons « le Bien dans le Mal », dixit el Pollo qui se reconnaitra: nous sommes très heureux d'avoir une chambre pour nos visiteurs ET détail très important: nous habitons maintenant sur le même coin de rue que le boteco préféré de Robin nommé TIZÉ! Le churrasco (barbecue traditionnel brésilien) et la bière y sont délicieux, la collection de cachaça très satisfaisante et l'ambiance sur la terrasse grandiose!

Au lieu du traditionnel lunch dominical que les brésiliens semblent tant chérir (et qui nous rappelle si bien la France, son repas interminable du dimanche midi et son petit snack nocturne), nous sommes partis explorer quelques parcs du Minas Gerais, tous plus ou moins à l'extérieur de la ville...

*Inhotim, un espace naturel hallucinant à l'intérieur duquel sont dispersées des galeries et œuvres d'art contemporain.

*Pampulha, juste à l'extérieur de la ville, et ses constructions d'Oscar Niemeyer (architecte qui a marqué l'architecture de nombreuses villes au Brésil et en Amérique Latine, en particulier la capitale Brasília)

*Parque de Mangabeiras, avec un point de vue époustouflant sur la ville

*Lapinha - Serra do Cipo, la plus grosse réserve naturelle de la région...on y a fait de l'escalade.

>>Toutes les photos sont sur le slideshow à votre gauche...

Et la woman of leisure n'est plus...enfin, plus vraiment!

Retour à la fac avec des cours de langue et de civilisation brésiliennes à l'université de la ville et je donne des cours de littérature française pour me faire de l'argent de poche!;-) Je me replonge donc dans le programme de 1ère L et ses classiques, ce qui me plait finalement beaucoup!

Et planification du séjour de nos visiteuses et de nos prochaines escapades, un peu plus loin cette fois!

Bref, tudo bem à Beagá.

Oui, notre portugais progresse...notre connaissance des différentes variétés de cachaça aussi...la consommation de l'une entraine l'amélioration de l'autre, mais c'est un pattern classique...

Oui, il fait toujours beau, bien qu'on ait perdu près de 10 degrés pendant une semaine, nous ramenant donc à une moyenne journalière de 20 degrés. Mais le beau temps est de nouveau parmi nous!

Et au programme des prochaines semaines: départ imminent avec une joyeuse bande d'expats et de brasileiros pour Tiradentes (village colonial du Minas Gerais) puisque c'est un long week-end pour nous, arrivée de nos visiteuses mi-septembre, direction Rio de Janeiro où le Corcovado et la plage nous attendent, et Buenos Aires début octobre!!

Abraços a todos!

NB: La section "Receitas" de ce blog est dedicacée à little Piggy Roula!

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Oi!

We changed the format to give you some news since the Primeira

Edição...so welcome to « A novela de Beagá » !

It's been a couple of weeks since we last gave some news. We've been busy « socializing », looking for a new appartement and visiting the surroundings of Beagá. In other terms, we've settled and started sort of integrating!

We moved recently, further to and including a couple of issues that we won't talk about! Let's say that simply renting a place in Beagá was slightly more difficult than buying one in Montreal, even though the project was helping us out big time!

But let's see the best of it: we are very happy to have an extra room for visitors AND very important detail: we are right on the same corner as Robin's favorite “boteco” called TIZÉ! The churrasco (traditional brazilian barbecue) and the beer are delicious there...the cachaça menu very decent and the atmosphere UNBELIVABLE!

Instead of the traditional Sunday Lunch that Brazilian people seem to enjoy so much (which also reminds us the just as traditional and endless French Sunday Lunch, followed by its little snack at night, when you've already spent the whole day eating!), we toured around and visited quite of few parks within the state of Minas Gerais...

*Inhotim, a gorgeous natural park where lots of galleries and works of arts are exposed.

*Pampulha, right outside of town. With constructions by Oscar Niemeyer (famous architect who built many buildings and various other pieces of art around Brazil and Latin America)

*Parque das Mangabeiras, with an amazing view of the city

*Lapinha - Serra do Cipo, the biggest natural reserve and park in the state of Minas Gerais, where we went climbing.

>> All the pictures are on the slideshow on your left...

And « the woman of leisure » is not anymore...well, not really!

Back to school with classes of Brazilian Language and Civilization at the local university as well as teaching French and French litterature!

And also busy with the planning of our « visiteuses' » stay as well as our future trips...a little bit further this time.

So, tudo bem in Beagá!

Yes, our Portuguese is getting better...so does as our knowledge of cachaça tasting...one actually follows the other...the more you taste, the more you speak...but I guess that's very usual!

Yes, the weather is still gorgeous, eventhough we had a little bit of « cold » for a week (20 Celcius).

And coming up next: leaving very shortly to Tiradentes (colonial village in Minas Gerais) with a couple of expats and brasileiros as this week-end is a long week-end over here, , arrival of our « visiteuses » mid-september, going to Rio de Janeiro where the Corcovado and the beach are waiting for us, and Buenos Aires early october!!

Abraços a todos!

NB: The "Receitas" section of this blog is dedicated to little Piggy Roula!

Beagá...Bar Capital of Brazil!...

Beagá...la capitale des bars du Brésil...çà nous va si bien!

Travel Section of the New York Times...

By SETH KUGEL

Published: October 28, 2007

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/travel/28next.html

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA > BRAZIL

NEXT STOP | BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL

A Town Where All the World Is a Bar

Bar do Caixote one of Belo Horizonte’s plentiful informal botecos.
Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

BELO HORIZONTE, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, has managed to become the country’s third-largest city while remaining almost completely unknown to the outside world. If tourists — more drawn to the sybaritic pleasures of Rio de Janeiro or the urban clamor of São Paulo — know it at all, it is because they may pass through it on their way to Ouro Preto and Diamantina, treating it as a little more than a refueling stop as they head toward those picturesque colonial-era mining towns.

Its international anonymity was born of no coastline and thus no beaches, no famous Carnival and thus no February madness, and no big attractions save a few buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer that pale next to his famous works in Brasília.

But Beagá, the city’s nickname (from the pronunciation of its initials in Portuguese), does have a claim to fame: as the bar capital of Brazil. Not bars as in slick hotel lounges or boozy meat markets, but bars as in botecos, informal sit-down spots where multiple generations socialize, drink beer and often have an informal meal. If you believe the local bluster, there are 12,000 bars in the city, more per capita than anywhere else in the country. Why, no one is completely sure, but one theory has turned into a popular saying: “Não tem mares, tem bares.” Loosely: “There are no seas, thus there are bars.”

And though tourist guidebooks barely make mention of them, they make for a great way for travelers to dive into the social life of a city whose metropolitan area has exploded in recent decades to over five million inhabitants. The best time to come is for the eighth annual Comida di Buteco competition in April, when some 40 of the top bars square off in categories like hygiene, beer frigidity, service and most importantly, best tira-gosto — or appetizer. Winners are decided not just by judges but by public ballot, giving Belo-Horizontinos a flimsy excuse to go out every night for a month.

If you miss it, don’t worry. Every night of the year seems to have something of a party feel in this off-the-radar screen hot spot. Get your feet wet at Mercearia Lili (Rua São João Evangelista, 696, Santo Antônio, 55-31-3296-1951), a regular participant in Comida di Buteco. It is one bar of many in Santo Antônio, an upscale neighborhood of steep hills that require superhuman parallel parking skills or, preferably, use of the city’s metered taxis.

The bar is typical in many ways, not least of which is the furniture: yellow plastic tables and chairs, with the maroon Skol beer logo, spilling out onto the sidewalk (600-milliliter bottles of the Pilsener Skol, to be shared in small glasses, are the citywide order of choice). The buzz of conversation and the clink of bottles — not a D.J. — provide the soundtrack; grey hair and what in the United States would be underage youth share the tables.

Not far away is Via Cristina (Rua Cristina, 1203, Santo Antônio, 55-31-3296-8343). It’s more upscale with tables covered in green and white checkerboard tablecloths, uniformed waiters and a wall of cachaça — hundreds of different bottles of the sugar cane liquor — that the bartenders use a library-style bookshelf ladder to reach. Their entry in this year’s contest was the Raulzito, a fritter-like pastry filled with dried beef that can be had for two reais (about $1.10 at 1.84 reais to the dollar)

If there were a Comida di Buteco award for “Hardest to Get To,” the Freud Bar (no address, Nova Lima, 55-31-8833-9098, freudbar.com for map) would win every year. The place is plunked down in the middle of some woods outside the city, down a winding unpaved road. The bar is built into a hill, warmed by a bonfire, and has a few tables actually in the surrounding trees. It has live music (blues and rock), and serves a limited but creative menu, like mulled wine, or a cup of squash, mozzarella and chicken soup (3.50 reais), a nice break from the bean and pork rind soup that is available at just about every boteco.

Botecos are not just nighttime affairs, as you’ll find if you head to the city’s Central Market on a weekend afternoon. Sure, there are stands selling fruit, meat, the state’s famous cheese, live dogs and birds (as pets), and live hens (as dinner). But the market is also full of uproarious, packed bars like Lumapa, where authorities must chain off a chokingly slender pedestrian walkway so the non-beer-drinking shoppers can get by. A calmer choice is Casa Cheia (Central Market, store 167, Centro, 55-31-3274-9585) a sit-down place serving all its past Comida di Buteco creations, like the Mexidoido chapado, a mishmash of rice, vegetables, four kinds of meat, and quail eggs.

It is also worth heading to the more far-flung neighborhoods to see some of the quirkier takes on the bar theme. (With 11,999 competitors, you do what you can to stand out.) The ultra-informal Bar do Caixote (Rua Nogueira da Gama, 189, João Pinheiro, 55-31-3376-3010) literally means “Bar of the Crate,” and sure enough, the tables and chairs are wooden crates. The overall winner of the 2007 Comida de Buteco, Bar do Véio, or “Bar of the Old Guy” (Rua Itaguaí, 406, Caiçara, 55-31-3415-8455) is in an outer neighborhood and your cab driver may have trouble finding it, but anyone in the area can direct you. Their simple dish of chunks of pork and tiny golden-fried balls of potato served with a standout pineapple and mint sauce was the 2007 tira-gosto winner.

When you need a bar break, take an afternoon trip to the Pampulha neighborhood, where several Niemeyer buildings stand, including his famous Church of São Francisco de Assis. The neighborhood also houses Belo Horizonte’s most famous restaurant, Xapuri (Rua Mandacaru, 260, Pampulha, 55-31-3496-6198), the best place in town to try the traditionally rustic cuisine of Minas Gerais. And Sunday morning, you can find unusual gifts at the Hippie Fair (a k a the Feira de Arte e Artensanato da Afonso Pena), two long blocks on Avenida Alfonso Pena crammed with clothing, jewelry, household goods and crafts. When you’re done, stop at food stalls at either end for fried fish or coconut sweets, or pop into the beautifully landscaped Municipal Park park just below the fair to relax. In either place, you won’t be far from a vendor ready to crack you open a can of Skol. In Belo Horizonte, the world’s a bar.

Bottles of cachaça,or sugar cane liquor, line the walls at another bar.

Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

Life is good in Beagá!...

Recently published in the Gringo Times...

http://thegringotimes.com/news/rio-travel/48-hours-in-belo-horizonte/

48 Hours in Belo Horizonte

RIO DE JANEIRO - According to the United Nations, Belo Horizonte, or BH as it is known to insiders, is the city with the best quality of life in all of Latin America. It is also the third biggest city in Brazil, the capital of Minas Gerais and will be one of the hosts of the FIFA World Cup in 2014. And yet many Gringos don’t even know where to find it on a map. BH is one of the country’s hidden gems, offering rich history, beautiful architecture and great nightlife.

BH was the first modern Brazilian city to undergo urban planning. When the state capital of Ouro Preto was moved there in 1893, the architect Aarão Reis set to work. The project was inspired by the most modern metropolises in the world at the time, namely Paris and Washington DC. The first major square that Reis built was the Praça da Liberdade. Its buildings were designed in an eclectic style with neoclassical elements, such as colonial Baroque. Today, the square tells the story of Brazilian architecture, with elements of art deco, two modernist Niemeyer buildings built in the 50s and 60s as well as a post-modernist building from the 80s.

Start out Friday night in the Savassi quarter at the hip kilo restaurant Sushi Beer. It has a Japanese buffet as well as pizza and appetizers on offer. There are two locations in BH, and The Gringo Times recommends the set-up on 1121 Rua Tomé de Souza for its lively weekend crowd. They serve from 7PM until 1AM, and it is advisable to arrive early to get a good table.

Following dinner, head to the club Chaletzinho in the Seis Pistas quarter for one of Brazil’s only open-air dance floors. Housed in a re-styled Swiss chalet restaurant, the venue mixes traditional European mountain design with modern elements. The music is electronic, although check their website as they also host classic rock nights.

For those in the know, breakfast in BH is taken at Padaria Savassi on 1436-A Rua Rio Grande do Norte in Savassi. It is an historic bakery so famous that it gave its name to the neighborhood itself. While perusing their morning buffet, be sure to try the regional specialties broa de fubá com queijo e coco (cornflower bread with cheese and coconut)and pão mineiro recheado de queijo (typical Minas Gerais bread stuffed with cheese).

Colorful outdoor sculptures in the Parque Municipal, photo by Marino Junior.

Spend the day shopping at Savassi’s many boutiques. Be sure to make a stop in the chic shopping mall Patio Savassi, which is well-stocked with all the top brands in a relaxed setting. If that isn’t enough go to Diamond Shopping in Lourdes, which has a charming market called Praça do Mercado, which sells fruits, vegetables, meat and fresh breads. Get the fixings for a picnic lunch and head to the beautiful Parque Municipal(City Park), just off Avenida Afonso Pena.

Saturday night in Belo Horizonte can be warmed up with a wood-stove pizza enjoyed leisurely over a good bottle of Italian wine at the trendy restaurant Marília Pizzeria on 153 Rua Marilia de Dirceu in Lourdes. With forty different combinations on offer and a seventy-bottle strong wine list, you can’t go wrong in this popular weekend destination. Be sure to reserve a table on their website.

You cannot leave BH without trying the classic drink of Minas Gerais, cachaça. The venue Alambique Cachaçaria offers everything from ten-year cachaça to varieties made with honey, not to mention live traditional Minas music. With a mixed crowd, it offers two clubs for the price of one, with electronic DJs on one stage and Minas musicians on the other.

Sunday can be spent at one of the city’s many museums. Palacio Das Artes is a great choice. Housed in a cultural complex in the Lourdes neighborhood, it displays eighteenth and nineteenth century art with a focus on BH’s architectural history and colonial art, as well as modern and contemporary collections.