Brazil Blog
About this blog
Thrill of Brazil is a travel blog all about Brazil written by Moon Brazil author Michael Sommers. Michael blogs about Brazil travel, culture, and more. He welcomes questions, comments, and story ideas.
Recent Posts
- Care for a Drink with your Film? (or a Film with your Drink?)
- Brazil’s Homegrown Tourism Boom
- Brazil's Best and Write-est
- Making House Calls in Rio (Part II)
- Making House Calls in Rio (Part I)
- The Dawning of Brazil's B&B Age
- Rio's Alternative Points of View
- Taxi Trouble in Santa Teresa
- Obamas Take to the Campaign Trail in Brazil
- Plans and Punctuality
- Reliving Tropicalismo - On and Off Screen
- Food and Lodging that Make the Grade
- The Making of Moon Living Abroad in Brazil
- U.S. is Number One Source of Immigrants to Brazil
- Best English-Language Blogs about Brazil
Brazil’s Moving Up in the World
When I first moved to Brazil over a decade ago, the expressions “First World” and “Third World” were frequently bandied about: not only in the media, but among people in their day-to-day conversations.
Journalists were constantly decrying Brazil’s shameful signs of “Third World”-ism: poverty, corruption, inflation, etc. while celebrating the nation’s “First World” achievements: economic growth, stable currency, the presence of Latin America’s wealthy mega city (São Paulo)., home to the planet’s largest fleet of helicopters and its second-most profitable Armani store. more >>
What Do Passover and Pernambuco Have in Common? Fluden!
The other day, my mother sent me an e-mail entitled “fluden!!!”, in which she declared, triumphantly, that she had succeeded in tracking down a recipe for the perfect Passover dessert. For those of you who haven’t a clue what it is, fluden is a traditional Jewish sweet (also known as fladen and floden, depending on one’s Yiddish dialect) featuring layers of fruits and nuts wrapped in wafer-thin pastry. Interestingly, you’d be hard-pressed to find fluden in North America; even in the most diehard Jewish kitchens, it’s somewhat of a rarity. In fact, my mother (the daughter of Lithuanian Jews whose father studied to be a rabbi and whose mother was a hard-core baker) had never heard of, let alone tasted, fluden until last year when she and I traveled to Recife, capital of Pernambuco. more >>
Lap of Luxury
Recently I landed what many people (including me) would consider to be a dream gig – reviewing luxury hotels in Brazil for an American-based site called Luxury Latin America.com. Naturally, reviewing a luxury hotel means getting to stay in a luxury hotel, something that most of the world’s population – including most tourists – don’t get to do on a daily basis. Aside from the (barely concealable) joy of getting to live it up to the hilt (at least for 24 hours) and go to sleep in a king-sized bed whose sheets have an astronomically high thread count, the interesting thing about staying in these hotels is analyzing just what constitutes the “concept” of luxury these days – in general, and in Brazil. more >>
Favela Rising in Brazil
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva is the latest to endorse the growing phenomenon of Rio’s “ favela tourism” – a trend that has generated lots of debate (the concept of “touring” favelas has both fierce proponents and critics) and which I explore at some length in Moon Rio and the Rio chapter of Moon Brazil. Lula made the endorsement in a speech he gave at the opening of the Fifth World Urban Forum on March 22. more >>
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