Road Trip - Londrina

Now on to part two about our trip to Londrina. You already know I loved the microbrewery. Overall, I enjoyed everything else too. It is a unique city with a lot more to offer than what I would have thought.

Londrina is a little over twice the size of Maringá, about 700,000. I’m finding in Brazil the bigger, the better, when it comes to cities. In the US, a city of 300,000 such as Lexington has a lot to offer and usually a good amount of variety. It is the perfect city size for me, as long as I can take some trips to larger places on occasion for more of the big city feel.

However a city of 300,000 here is small by Brazilian standards. It means you are limited in what you can get at, say, a grocery store, and in the amount of variety there is in restaurant options. This is what made Londrina so great in my opinion - more variety.

We spent part of the day shopping at Catuaí, a large shopping mall on the outskirts of the city. To my surprise, Brazil is very big on their shopping malls. They don’t differ much from the ones in the states, but the one in Maringá, is full of overpriced imports - think Nike shoes for about US$250.
Fortunately, the mall in Londrina offered some less expensive options. It is actually pretty fun to shop for graphic tshirts in the malls here. We usually find some fun Portuguese sayings that we’ll wear once we are back home.

We also got Parmalat gelato. Oh, it was so great! Parmalat produces milk here and it is actually an Italian company. The milk is the best I’ve had, even among what is offered in the states. Staying true to their roots they make great gelato too.

We also ventured to a nice area downtown – a pedestrian only area, I might add. I love this concept and I wonder why we don’t have the same thing here in Maringá (there is one in Curitiba, also).

The stores close at about 1pm on Saturday as they do here so the street was very empty during our visit. However, many of the same stores were there as we have on Avendia Brasil in Maringá. The only difference is you risk your life crossing the streets and shuffle shoulder-to-shoulder through crowds when shopping here.

The pedestrian only area in Londrina was such a nice place. There were plenty of benches for resting and a lot of green to make it inviting. The whole concept of these no-car areas can be found all over in Europe and now in Brazil. Come on US, it is time to get with it. Let’s start designating these areas in all our major cities - large and small!

I guess you probably have the idea that it was a great visit to Londrina. We left there thinking when will Maringá get this or that. The truth is, it is growing rapidly and I’m sure most things will get here eventually. Hey, the Pizza Hut showed up just a few months ago. Hopefully it won’t be long before the Parmalat Gelato makes its debut too!