Manaus, Teatro Amazonas opera house, floating market

Manaus, June 2014

The city of Manaus has a couple of tourist spots to visit, here are a couple of the most popular, the market and the Teatro Amazonas opera house.

Fish!


The pier is where it all happens.  

This is the floating market, as in you float your boat of fish up to the pier and sell from the boat.

It seems to work out well for everyone.

Boats that travel up and down the river are the highways of the Amazon.  The standard is to bring your own hammock, though it was mentioned there are not a lot of restrooms on board.

We were on a boat that had to jockey for space on the pier and passengers from our sister boat came over to our boat to get on shore.  Also, getting onto the pier took a little finesse.  The crew on the boats were awesome!

There is a market that is a real functioning market-everyone comes here to get their fish, meat and vegetables.  I have no idea what this is but I bet I ate it at sometime in Manaus.

The original market was designed by Eiffel and is beautiful wrought iron.  It is mostly tourist trinkets, but gives you a flavor if you don't want to get fish all over your shoes.

The designs really are pretty.

The most famous building in Manaus is their opera theater.  One of the rubber barons had it built and the city has managed to keep it renovated and still functioning as a performance space.

  Mosaic tiles on top in the colors of the Brazilian and Amazonas flag.

I love their logo!

The paintings are originals, though they are planning a restoration.  The glass lights are original Italian.

The theater holds maybe 500 people, but includes some great balcony seating.

Nicely restored ceiling in the fancy gathering area.  I felt it had a good balance between ornate, intricate details and plai, spacious areas.

Most of the wood is from elsewhere and they no longer allow you to walk on it, since restoring it would be quite difficult.

I was unable to figure out ahead of time if any performances were happening while we were in town, but later learned that the opera festivals happens in May-maybe next time!