Day 69 - Rio de Janeiro (Part 2)

Tuesday, 21 October 2014 

Next, the Imperial Summer Palace which has now been turned into a museum, and we got to enter the museum wearing some funny looking slippers that you slide under your entire shoe, which means you had to slide and walk around, it was not the most comfortable thing to do. The palace was huge, with many rooms including bedrooms of the various royal family, sewing room, music room, diplomats' room, exposition rooms, etc. we also saw the crown of King Dom Pedro II and some of the clothes that they wore at the time. There were many paintings of various members of the royal family. 

In May 1888, slavery was abolished in Brazil. Queen Isabel, the daughter of King Pedro II, signed the decree abolishing slavery, and the original decree as well as the pen she used to sign the decree with can be seen in this museum. Queen Isabel signed the decree because she was left in charge of Brazil when Portugal demanded that its King be in Portugal and not elsewhere. 

I think I had already mentioned that King Dom Pedro II was interested in all things science. On a visit to the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, he was impressed by Alexander Graham Bell's new invention, the telephone, and had a line connecting his Summer Palace to his farm headquarters. The telephone can still be seen in the room that was once his office.

Sometime in 1889, there was plans for Brazil to become a republic, and the royal family were politely asked to leave Brazil, and they left quietly without any bloodshed or violence. I am not sure why Portugal did not fight the Brazilians, but I think it is perhaps because the Portuguese empire was already declining at that time, making way for the new superpowers at that time, the Dutch and the British empires. But I may be wrong, I am not a historian although history intrigues me.

After the Summer Palace we passed by the House of Queen Isabel, this is where she stayed after she got married. We also stopped by the Cathedral, a beautiful church where the royalties and aristocrats used to be buried. And then we stopped by the Crystal Palace, it is a building made of transparent crystal or glass, and was a gift from Queen Isabel's husband to her. It used to be used for bird and flower exhibitions. Today it is used for exhibitions as well.

Then we had lunch. Because I was late to lunch, Sebastian had already sat down with this nice Colombian couple. So I sat down at the same table with this Brazilian guy, Normando Lima, and he could not speak a word of English and I could not speak a word of Portuguese! But with a lot of hand gestures and Sebastian's help from time to time (he can speak Portuguese), we got on pretty well. Normando is very cute.