Welcome to our (slightly delayed) festive blog!! Happy (belated) Christmas and best wishes for the New Year to you all.

We left the last blog dirty hungover (as we will leave this one…) and flying out of Salvador to Brazil's capital. Brasilia is very different from Salvador, but equally fascinating, and it was the place where we spent Christmas, having got a good deal on a suite in a nice hotel (courtesy of Michelle's lovely parents!).

It's a "New City", in that it didn't exist at all until the 1960s. So we were a bit worried it would be like Milton Keynes and/or a little bit empty and soulless. It is definitely weird, but we liked it. It is supposed to be "modern", but it's a dated 1960s modern, and the '60s aren't generally remembered for architectural prowess. Parts of it feel like a scene from A Clockwork Orange or from the description of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Brasilia is the administrative capital and the Government buildings range from unusual and charmingly thought through to just weird. All the ministry buildings are identical, in a row, and slightly Stalinesque.

The whole place was built in about 3 years, although the planning took generations. Apparently some Nostradamus type character had a dream about a new civilization in the middle of Brazil in the mid 19th century, and Brasilia is that place. Staggeringly the same architect was responsible for more or less the whole thing. His name is Oscar Niemeyer and he is still working at 104 years old, and still sticking to the same plan forged in the 1950s! We are not sounding overly positive so far, but there are a few saving graces… the whole city is built to look like an aeroplane (or a drawn bow and arrow) and there are huge 6 lane highways down the fuselage and similar down the wings, so no traffic issues. The Congress, President's palace, judiciary and foreign office are all in the "cockpit" (although not the Treasury, which must be a mistake surely…) this makes everything quite easy, and there are some good restaurants and bars.

We hired a car and went on a tour of the City on Christmas eve. We visited a fascinating place called the "Temple of Good Will", which is a non-denominational place of worship, it's a pyramid where all religions are celebrated. It was huge, and unusual given that so much of Brazil is catholic (although we found out its constitutionally secular). Apparently there are lots of similar spiritual movements and cults in and around Brasilia, mostly to do with the Brazilian Nostradamus guy mentioned above.

The Congress building is the home of the parliament, with two houses, the House of the Deputies and the Senate. We had a great tour, we got talking to our guide, Valerie, and (without meaning to) made her feel sorry for us that we were spending Christmas away from families. She incredibly generously invited us to her house for their Christmas dinner, which is held on Christmas eve so you see in midnight. We had planned to go to a mass at a church called Santuario Dom Bosco that night, but we figured out that we could do both, so we went and had a great time with her and her family - an excellent meal and great company. The church beforehand was out of this world (see the photos), huge, almost entirely stained glass windows and with no supporting columns - so its light, airy, very beautiful and awe inspiring.

Christmas day we did all the things you are supposed to do (presents, eating, drinking, calling/ Skype-ing the family, movies, sleeping in the afternoon) except with room service hamburgers instead of turkey.

After Christmas we hit the road again to a place called Ouro Preto in the state of Minas Gerais. This old gold mining town (Ouro Preto means Black Gold) was one of Brazil's richest in the 18th century and it was built up very much like a beautiful European City, similar to old town Lisbon… the churches and architecture were great and we spent a good couple of days walking around its cobblestoned streets and visiting local attractions including a gold mine.

We then moved on in another overnight bus to Rio de Janeiro, where we spent a few days resting, preparing for NYE (aka Michelle shopping for an outfit) and settling into our lovely apartment in Copacabana. Today is new years day, so we have spent most of the day not moving far, but NYE was amazing. Copacabana fills up with about 2 million people on the beach and its supposed to be one of the best new year parties in the world, we couldn't disagree. We splashed out a bit on a restaurant on the beach front - partly for security as it was raining really hard the days prior - but it worked out brilliantly. We ate great food, drank lots of wine and champagne and got to go in and out onto the beach at will. We celebrated English new year with a glass of champers and then at midnight were on the beach for the fireworks, words can't describe how amazing the display and the view was, we will try and upload a video at some point, but suffice to say that it was incredible!!

Notes: We are three months into our trip (see facebook best of photos blog); for a nation that loves music so much, and defines so many musical styles, we do hear a lot of Phil Collins - maybe sussudio actually means something in Portuguese.