Florianopolis is the place where locals become tourists and tourists become locals. A little down the coast from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo sits Santa Catarina Island and its beloved capital city. During summer, both travellers and locals alike swarms the famous beaches to enjoy some of Brazil’s best laid-back atmosphere. And it’s also here that tasting açai and sipping margaritas are part of everyone’s daily routine!
Nevertheless, food-porn and beaches apart, the enchanting city is a great opportunity to experience some brazilian lifestyle. Shopping at the local market, spending afternoons at the on the sand and wandering around the city’s backstreet looking for some freshly squeezed caldo de cana (sugarcane juice).
City view from our apartment
Beaches & How to Get There
As a tourist, having your basecamp in Floripa (how locals call Florianopolis) is the perfect strategy to visit all the hidden corners of Santa Catarina Island. From Santinho Beach to Mole Beach and on to Joaquina Beach, you’ll honestly could spend a day at a different beach for a whole month! Some of the beaches are more crowded, some are famous for surfing and others are pristine places that barely get visited.
The best way to reach the beaches, if you don’t have your own transport and prefer to avoid salty taxi fares, is to jump on the local buses. Thankfully, unlike other cities, within 10-min walking distance from the city center you can find the international-national bus station, the interprovincial bus station and even the provincial bus station. The latter is what everybody uses to move around the island for just a couple of pennies (5-10R).
Visiting the local market
Luckily enough, just on the outskirts of the city center, right in front of the bus stations, you can find the Mercado Municipal (aka local market). Here, tourists and locals alike come to buy fresh greens, tasty meat and fish that was just caught the same morning!
On top of being a great chance to cook yourself some local seafood (trust us is damn tasty) everything is much cheaper compared to stuff you can buy in the supermarkets. And last but not least, you can also try to famous Caldo de Cana!!!
NOTE: Truth to be said, we’re still at a stalemate in whether the Caldo de Cana is something tasty or nasty. Max is not a fan of the drink but Marta surely found it great! Tell us what you think!
Getting addicted to Açai
Soooo if you’ve visited Brazil and have not fallen in love with Açai then there’s must be something wrong with you. Around the world, the açai berries have become famous for their health-related benefits, being used in smoothies and bla bla bla… but the motherland of these berries is here in Brazil.
If we were to describe an Açai bowl (açai na tigela), we could simply say that’s something halfway through between a an italian granita and a frozen smoothie. Given the love for the food and the massive demand for it, in Brazil there’s a huge production of already-prepared Açai buckets who gets sent all over the country. Nonetheless, after all the Açai we ate in Rio it was only here in Floripa we got to see how they make a real one from scratch!
Against what many people would think, the creamy Açai is not only made by mashed berries but also slices of banana. We’re told that without the banana the Açai wouldn’t have the same texture and would be too liquid! Would you ever imagined that?
Imagine us, an Italian and a Spanish trying to tell the guy making the Açai (obviously in our mixture of italo-hispano-portoguese) NOT to put the banana cause we asked for JUST the Açai, in front of a shop full of Brazilians.
Awkward and embarrassing to say the least (hahaha) but hey, doesn’t Marta look happy with the final product???
If Florianopolis is along the route you’re planning to do, find this city a little spot in you’re planning. Before or after the huge Brazilian metropolis, spending some days in this little spot of paradise is the way to go!
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