Embu das Artes

My husband secretly cooked me meatloaf on Monday.  (It is feasible that it was less covert and more my avoidance of the kitchen.)  The dish was stuffed with sun dried tomatoes, had melted mozzarella on top, and was delish.  So here I am, two days later, eating a cold meatloaf sandwich (of which I have gone without for a minimum of seven months). 

Eating food that can justifiably be smothered in ketchup is distracting me from the fact that my husband has been in Rio for three weeks straight.

Smart move, husband.  Well played.

Meanwhile, he has also left me with a list of priorities:
1. Puzzle
2. Anything else

Apparently, someone wants his table back and three pieces a day is not considered sufficient progress.  I have been given a deadline of ten days to complete the hardest puzzle ever.  (Thanks for that Lisa.)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

A few weeks back we took a day trip to Embu das Artes to celebrate some birthdays.  Technically, it was only Suzanna’s birthday… but she kindly shared the day with me (since mine was on hold until we could make friends to celebrate with.)

IMG_1571IMG_1573

Embu is located 40 minutes outside of São Paulo. The town was founded by Jesuit priests in the 17th century and still maintains buildings from the colonial period.

It is a charming city with cobblestone streets, handicraft shops, and plenty of spots to drink the day away.  We opted for German fare which represented inhabitants that settled in the area generations ago.

On weekends and holidays, there is a handicraft fair which has been occurring for more than 70 years and attracts people from all over the country.

IMG_1630IMG_1576

AND there were puppies… which makes this my new favorite weekend jaunt.

IMG_1579IMG_1578

I have a new found love for all things guinea fowl.

IMG_1586

IMG_1591

Taste testing artisanal cachaças.

IMG_1596IMG_1592

IMG_1594

IMG_1598

The floating head might be advertising hair braids.  I’m not sold.

IMG_1600IMG_1599

IMG_1605

IMG_1606IMG_1610

IMG_1609

IMG_1612

IMG_1615

IMG_1616IMG_1628

My husband ‘humoring me’ after I asked him to muddle for the picture.  There’s a first for everything. 

Also, I have officially become my mother with the use of that phrase.

IMG_1633

Have you met… THE CUTEST PUPPY EVER?!?

IMG_1639

IMG_1638

IMG_1647IMG_1646

Sampling toasted nuts and candied coconut. 

IMG_1637

IMG_1645

IMG_1651

IMG_1655

IMG_1656

IMG_1664

Sampa is what the locals affectionately call São Paulo.

IMG_1677

As with any good celebration, we rounded it out with Farkle and an exorbitant number of shots.  I won the contest for most farkles.

IMG_1679

Here’s to thirty good years, and seventy more to come.  Happy birthday Suzanna!

12 thoughts on “Embu das Artes

  1. Good luck with the trees in that puzzle. My strategy was to lay out all the orange/red leaf pieces in lines (there are probably a good 200 or so that look EXACTLY the same) and then one by one try each of them in a spot until I found the one that went there. Did I mention I took a week off of work to do that puzzle?

    • Honestly. The puzzle is so hard it’s almost not fun. It took us a while to get the last few pieces of the border. We were convinced you were screwing with us and kept two pieces in Chicago.

    • So glad you could contribute.

      I put that picture in there to see if you were paying attention. I’ll see what I can do…

    • We plan to take the trip again prior to our visit home this spring… It’s a great spot for gifts. Let me know when you’re back and we’ll plan dinner with the boys!

  2. Pingback: Catch up « rooted journeys

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s