Brazilians start celebrating the Christmas season on Christmas day, and keep going until early February when Carnival ends.   Brazilians often say the entire country is on vacation during this time, which isn’t far from the truth.  

It may not be obvious to everyone why the Christmas season starts on Christmas day, unlike much of the northern hemisphere where year end parties, celebrations, and gift purchasing starts at the end of November and continues until Christmas Eve.   It boils down to a couple of simple reasons.  Brazilians don’t focus a lot of attention on gift giving, they like to celebrate Christmas with family and friends, much like thanks giving is celebrated in the US.  Christmas is in the middle of summer, not winter, and finally the school year ends right before Christmas, for summer vacation!   Christmas is actually the start of summer, summer vacation, the end of the year, and beginning of most employee vacation time.  The entire country is literally on vacation during this time, enjoying the hot summer days and warm summer nights.

The first time I visited Brazil, it was to Porto Alegre and the small city of Gramado, where I ended up meeting my future wife.  Since then, I've been back to Brazil many times, visiting different parts of the country each time.  It's such a massive country, that it always seems different, no matter where we go.   The beaches of Natal were amazing, the food was wonderful and the people fantastic!   Rio has lots of great tourist attractions, and it's just such a relaxing time to be on the beaches there.  Sao Paulo is just a massive city, and without knowing someone there, I could see it becoming insanely infuriating.  The city itself was amazing because I now have relatives there!  The parks within the city where goregous.  They seemed to be everywhere!   All of the areas we were taken to were of course well manicured, safe and fascinating.  The traffic was intense, and without knowing someone there it would be horrendous to get around.  While taxi's were abundant, it's impossible to tell if the 3km journey is going to take you 10 minutes or 3 hours.  For now, I think I'll stick with the beaches of Santa Catarina.  Beautiful, calm, and with a city just large enough to keep up a nice city lifestyle.

I am still working on my next vacation, but I am leaning towards a revisit of the Florianopolis area, and possibly trying to see Recifie!   I've been through Natal and I loved the weather, people, and beaches!  For now, I'm just relaxing and making some very simple plans.

• Florianopolis
• Recife

It's pretty basic so far, but I'll fill things in as time permits!  There are so many places to visit, and so many places to just sit back and relax in these cities.  I'm going to be extremely busy trying to relax.