In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, every Saturday there is a Feira (farmers market) on Rua Paulo Barreto (see map below). In fact this market moves around to different neighborhoods every day. On Wednesday you can find them near Botafogo Beach, on Friday, they are in Urca etc. They offer a stunning variety of exotic tropical fruits and vegetables as well as fresh farm eggs. Mixed in with all of the produce, there are a few specialty stands that sell cold, pressed, sugar cane juice as well as meat or cheese filled pastels. I had to try both of these new things. The fried pastel was cheesy and greasy and made me feel pretty sick. The juice was cold, refreshing and sweet, with a unique flavor quite different than what I would expect when thinking of sugar flavor. Delicious!

The Saturday Market

Your road map to the Market

Someone’s future chicken dinner

A Cherimoya fruit. Often called a custard apple, it is creamy, sweet and full of beautiful, shiny dark brown seeds.

Egg boy wrapping my eggs in newspaper to go.

Was the pastel a good idea?

No,

NO!

Tomorrow we are making a special trip to Niteroi, the New Jersey of Rio de Janeiro, to visit this abandoned island that we spotted while checking out the contemporary art museum.

The bridge is all locked off…. so we will have to use a boat to get to the island. We don’t have a boat. We have our blow up air mattress… AKA The Magic Carpet. She floats!

More soon!