This weekend I went to Recife to visit my best friends Alex and Lisa in Recife, Pernambuco in the northeast of Brazil. Their kids Max and Zoe were great and so much fun to play with – great kids! We went surfing on Saturday and did some tourism with the kids on Sunday.
Recife actually has the oldest Synagogue of the Americas! The Jewish Dutch who were there were eventually kicked out of Recife… they ended up traveling North to the United States and founded a city called New Amsterdam – a.k.a. New York City!! Just imagine if they had stayed in Recife… we could’ve had a great town! Heheheh… surely it’s not that simple but fun to play with that notion of “what if” we had been colonized by other people other than the Portuguese. Don’t get me wrong – I love the Portuguese – but their colonization of Brazil was always extractive as opposed to the US where people went to build a country. That’s why the US is where it is now and Brazil is where it is, even if it has a longer history.
In any case – here are the photos: