Chocolate Galore

It's that time of a year again, the Ciccoshow has come to Bologna. Every year in November usually around the 13- 18th, the main square, Piazza Maggiore, is filled with stands of well known chocolatiers from Italy. 

It attracts a large crowd, everyone carrying bags of truffles, drinking hot chocolate, or enjoy chocolate covered strawberries and waffles. 

The chocolate is good and unique, I enjoyed trying a honey and milk chocolate truffle, coconut, cinnamon, and bronte pistachios along with of course the good ol' dark chocolate and milk chocolate. After about 3 chocolates its enough to make you feel sick, but everything always looks so good!  

If you're lucky you might even get a few free 

samples.

Fernando de Noronha

Our honeymoon came to an end with four relaxing days on the archipelago, Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha. It is a beautiful, small island, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with what are claimed to be the best beaches in Brazil, and we agree! 

Since the island is an archipelago site, there are many rules and restrictions, one being that only 460 visitors can be on the island at a time because of the fragile ecosystem. After we arrived in our small plane with quite a bumpy ride, we had to pay a large environmental tax, which increases by the number of days you stay. We paid around $100 for 4 days. 

The first day, we thought that we could get by for the next few days without a dune buggy, the most common mean of transportation on the island. That was a mistake- the island was much bigger than we had anticipated, and spent a good time walking along the coast. However we were able to visit many beaches we wouldn't have seen otherwise. And in the end we rented an old dune buggy. 

The island offers many activities like scuba diving, snorkeling, and boat trips. We took a boat trip that toured the entire coast of the island, stopped for snorkeling, and we saw hundreds of dolphins! We also went snorkeling with a guide who showed us turtles over 100 years old, lobsters, and all sorts of tropical fish. 

These four days were very relaxing and fun, however despite the beauty, it is very expensive. Everything must be imported and so it was difficult not eat for less an $20 a meal a person.  It was also possible that a restaurant wouldn't have half the items on the menu because they hadn't arrived yet. 

This was the perfect way to end our honeymoon! 

Northern Coast of Brazil

While we were planning our honeymoon, we thought it would be fun to rent a car and drive along the northern coast to see all the beaches and not be typical tourists. However after doing some research we discovered that it would be rather difficult and could potentially be dangerous. So we booked a 4 day tour with Jeri Off Road,  to see the famous sand dunes which the north is known for. It was an absolute blast! 

We flew into Fortaleza, and our guide, Paolo, picked us up at the airport in his big white 4X4 ford truck. We drove 4 hours to Jericoacoara, a small town with a large surfing/kite surfing community. Jericoacoara is actually part of a national park, so there are no paved roads and there are no street lamps.  It's very picturesque town with very kind, laid back people. Apparently, on Sunset Hill you can seen the emerald flash. We watched the sunset and unfortunately didn't see it.  

After spending two nights in Jericoacoara we got back in our 4X4 with Paolo and drove along the coast,  "off roading" it to the Delta do Parnaiba. Along the way we stopped to see seahorses, take a boat trip, and watch the sunset again from the dunes. Our guide was a crazy driver, and we rarely understood what was going on so it was quite funny when we were shuffled out of the car and placed in a boat, and later told to get out of the boat and walk across crab filled mud to the coast not knowing what why. 

  The following day we continued onto Caburè, which was really just a stop on the long journey to the national park of Lençois Marenhenses. Another park full of sand dunes. For part of the year the spaces between the dunes are filled with water from the rain. The dunes had been full until July, the beautiful natural green and aquamarine pools, but after a drought the water dried up quickly and when we were there in September only 2 pools remained. The views were spectacular. I had never seen anything like it before.