Thursday, April 26, 2007
26th April, 07
We woke up early and so Rich suggested we go for a run on the promenade. This was a brilliant idea and I almost died. It was really good and we both felt good after. We had a good breakfast and then headed into Manaus city on the local bus- our last journey on local transportation. We went to Palacio Negro which was the house of a former German rubber baron and then sold to the first Governor of the state. They have a small tour of the palace and a few museums around and so it is now a cultural centre.The palace still holds the original furniture and art works and a lot of the wood was designed in Europe and the art pieces are from all over the world, even from countries like China. Manaus was a very rich city at the time of the rubber boom and the people who lived in this city were very wealthy; and in fact the story goes that anything that needed to be washed (even clothing) was sent to Europe because they believed that the river (Rio Negro or Black River) was dirty. This was our last bit of sightseeing and then we went to a great fruit juice bar. It started to pour and we had to wait until the rain subsided a bit. Luckily it did calm down and we quickly ran to the bus stop to catch the bus back to the Tropical Hotel. We went straight to sleep – not that it was successful – and then checked out at 19h00. We sat in the lobby catching up our admin and then went for dinner on the promenade. We got back to the hotel and had to wait until 1h30 am when the shuttle would take us to the airport.
We woke up early and so Rich suggested we go for a run on the promenade. This was a brilliant idea and I almost died. It was really good and we both felt good after. We had a good breakfast and then headed into Manaus city on the local bus- our last journey on local transportation. We went to Palacio Negro which was the house of a former German rubber baron and then sold to the first Governor of the state. They have a small tour of the palace and a few museums around and so it is now a cultural centre.The palace still holds the original furniture and art works and a lot of the wood was designed in Europe and the art pieces are from all over the world, even from countries like China. Manaus was a very rich city at the time of the rubber boom and the people who lived in this city were very wealthy; and in fact the story goes that anything that needed to be washed (even clothing) was sent to Europe because they believed that the river (Rio Negro or Black River) was dirty. This was our last bit of sightseeing and then we went to a great fruit juice bar. It started to pour and we had to wait until the rain subsided a bit. Luckily it did calm down and we quickly ran to the bus stop to catch the bus back to the Tropical Hotel. We went straight to sleep – not that it was successful – and then checked out at 19h00. We sat in the lobby catching up our admin and then went for dinner on the promenade. We got back to the hotel and had to wait until 1h30 am when the shuttle would take us to the airport.
# posted by Heidi & Richard's travels @ 8:21 PM 
