Brazil – Brazil Choir / Brazil String Orchestra / Quatuor Ébène / Richard Héry

The last day of our second trip to Brazil, August 2016, was spent traveling from Manaus, in the Amazon, to Campinas, just north of São Paulo, to catch our flight back to the United States.  We had a four hour stopover in Brasília, the planned city capital of Brazil.  Enough time to catch a bus and take some pictures of the nerve center of the city , the mall with all the government buildings, just as the sun was setting.

Brasília was founded in 1960, developed much like Washington D.C. in the States as a city designed to be the federal capital of Brazil, within a federal district distinct as a municipality from the rest of the country.  The city structure is known as the Pilot Plan, in the shape of an airplane or bird with a wide wingspan.  The centers of all three branches of government (Congress, President and Supreme Court) are located in the head, or cockpit, of Brasília’s bird, or plane.  And that is where these twilight pictures were taken.

National Museum

Ministerial buildings line up like domino pieces.

Statues and vendors in front of the National Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral

The National Congress from afar

An owl, hanging out in the middle of the mall.

Police barricades made getting close to the National Congress impossible.  A likely leftover of the months of demonstrations that racked Brazil during the impeachment scandal, or “political coup”, against President Dilma Rousseff this year.  By the time we got to Brazil in August, we saw few signs of the national unrest in our travels (yet we had also avoided the large cities like Rio and São Paulo).  Here in the capital, on a Saturday evening, there were two small ongoing political vigils kept alive by a handful of stalwart protestors.

Handful of protestors across the street at the left waving flags and signs at passing motorists.

Presidential Palace – Palácio do Planalto (Palace of the Plateau)