Que se passe-t-il

• Nightlife ( 0 Articles )
  

  Floripa is renowned as having some of the best nightlife in Brazil, both on the island itself as well as to the north on the mainland around places such as Balneário Camboriu and Porto Belo, and to the south around Garopaba, Ferrugem and Praia da Rosa. There are clubs popular with both straight and gay clubbers, sandy beach bars and restaurants,  plus lively strips of bars and lively strip clubs. Something for everyone, as you would expect from a place which also has something for everyone in terms of natural assets. There is also the added advantage of people toned and tanned from a life on the beach and in the surf. The scenery inside Floripa's nightspots is often as good as that outside.

  Floripa has advantages over other major places in Brazil such as Rio, São Paulo and Salvador, because the nightlife in general is as relaxed as the island itself. While nightlife in other places may be fine, getting to and from, or into and out of, such places may be a little hairy at times, Floripa has a friendly atmosphere in bars, restaurants and clubs all over the island. Sometimes a little too friendly...

  Being such a popular place to study, to live, to surf, to holiday and to bum around on the beach, the clientele of Floripa’s bars and clubs come from all over Brazil, not just the island. This gives the place a vibrant holiday atmosphere in the summer, and makes it far easier to find yourselves talking to the locals, even if the locals are from Manaus, almost 3,000km away from Floripa.

• Bars ( 0 Articles )
  

  Brazilians do like to drink and, Go Floripa is happy to report, do so far more than some of their other Latin cousins from South America and around the Mediterranean. Florianópolis has its fair share of bars, beach bars, street vendors and 24 hour service stations, supermarkets and hot dog stands where people congregate to crack open a couple of cold ones, or to shake up a caipirinha or two. One of the beauties of Brazil (and there are many) is that you are always, always able to find a place to buy a beer, and usually also a hot dog to go with it.

  For the best bars in Floripa, perhaps the best option is to head to Lagoa da Conceição at night. Avenida Afonso Delambert Neto is the centre of Centrinho nightlife, with bars lining both sides of the road that brings you in from the city. Most of them have live music at some point in the week, with a singer and his guitar accompanied by a drummer or perhaps a samba band in the larger places. Most of the bars stay open until at least 3am at the weekend, usually a little earlier during the week.

  Around the corner, strangely situated around the local Texaco service station rather than overlooking the water, are a number of cafes and bars with regular clientele sitting outside to watch the traffic pass by. No, Go Floripa doesn’t understand it either. There are also more options along that road, and up the hill towards the city, close to the Confraria das Artes club. Bars such as Vecchio Giorgio and Arte Chopp can be a night in themselves too, with live bands and music for the slightly older, more sophisticated Lagoa crowd.

  Avenida das Rendeiras is the road that takes you from Centrinho to the beaches. One side is washed by the gentle waves of the lagoon, the other is lined with bars, restaurants and clubs, only interrupted by the encroaching dunes, trying to cover the road with every Vento Sul. There are a selection of bars on this road, from pool bars to tiny kiosk that pick up the trade of people heading to the clubs on the same road. On many weekend nights, the whole road seems like a bar as young Brazilians line the concrete pavement and the wooden boardwalk, put music on in their cars and stand around together downing a few drinks before entering the clubs.

  The city centre of Florianópolis has a few options for bars, but tends to be a little quiet at night. A cheap daytime beer around the lively Mercado Público is always a good spot to watch the world bustle by. The Beira Mar Norte has a couple of bars, but is more restaurant-orientated. Trindade and Itacorubí on the other side of the hill from the city also have good cheap bars, as befitting their university locations.

  There are bars at the beaches in many spots around the island of Floripa and they can be very lively and great fun during the day. The beach bars of Praia Mole and Praia Brava especially can be as good as clubs on the right afternoon with the right crowd. Licencing laws means that they generally close as people head away from the beach around sunset. Go Floripa has the feeling that this will change in the near future, but for now it is sadly not possible to enjoy the rising moon reflecting off the waves while downing a dangerous caipirinha or three in the bars on these beaches. Jurerê is another place with beach bars and not too much else outside of the many clubs and restaurants.

• Clubs ( 0 Articles )
  

  Go Floripa can boldly state, without fear of being completely wrong, that the best clubs in Brazil, perhaps even in South America, are in Santa Catarina.

  There is no other place that has so many clubs ticking so many of the boxes that the best clubs need to have ticked. It begins with the music of course. To have the best music, you need to have the best DJ’s. The best DJ’s in the world come to South America for huge events such as Skolbeats in São Paulo, Reveillon in Rio, Carnaval in Salvador and Creamfields in Buenos Aires. Names such as Fat Boy Slim, Sander Kleinenberg, Pete Tong and Dubfire from Deep Dish have all made the journey for Summer in 2008/09. There is little point in travelling thousands of miles just for one gig, so they generally squeeze in a bit of a warm-up a night or two before. More often than not, they visit clubs such as Warung, on Praia Brava in Itajaíi, and El Divino, P12 and now Pacha close to Jurerê Internacional in Florianópolis.

  Perhaps they come here because the atmosphere on the way to and inside these places is more relaxed than Rio, less shady than Salvador. Perhaps the people who make the journey from Curitiba, Porto Alegre and even São Paulo provide a more cosmopolitan crowd than clubs in Buenos Aires with porteños all seeming to hide their insecurities behind sunglasses while dancing in the same ´treading grapes´ style.

  Being sited out of the cities, the clubs have scenery of beaches, jungle-covered mountains and lagoons that those of São Paulo can never hope to match. There is nothing like being able to see the sea while dancing in a club.

  One of the best clubs in Santa Catarina, Brazil, South America, perhaps even the world, doesn´t have this vista do mar though. Green Valley is set down the mountainous backroads on the interior side of the motorway from Balneário Camboriu, 90 minutes drive from Floripa. Tribaltech is another great Camboriu club.

  These are all clubs as clubbing intended, party places full of party people and a banging atmosphere for dancing  through the dawn and beyond for all the big nights. The real beauty of Santa Catarina clubbing though, the one aspect of visiting these clubs, the one memory that will stay with most people forever, is not the beauty of the setting. The beauty is definitely on the inside too for all of these clubs. Go Floripa will put any of these clubs alongside those of Ibiza, St Tropez, Miami Beach or any place that you care to name in the world, and we are confident that the staggering amount of painfully beautiful girls that fill the dancefloor and float past every few seconds will be more than you can see anywhere else on the planet. Welcome to Clubbing in Santa Catarina.

  Many of these clubs are not so easy to get to unless you have your own transport. Out in the wilds, close to beaches where buses don’t reach and taxis can be very expensive and hard to find for the way back. Luckily for visitors to Florianópolis, there is a way! Go Floripa has plenty of experience of taking visiting gringoes to such clubs! We can make recommendations, organise tickets and transport, and leave you to do nothing but be blown away by the whole experience. You will be impressed. Be warned though: Santa Catarina Clubbing has been known to destroy the odd visitor. Real Life may never be the same again afterwards.

  Back on the island, the three most easily accessible and popular clubs for visitors are probably El Divino Lounge on the Beira Mar Norte road,  plus Confraria das Artes and Circuit in Lagoa da Conceição. All have a mix of nights, with electronic music plus various shades of hip-hop and baile funk from DJ’s and live acts. All these clubs are open more regularly during the summer, and also through the winter too, unlike the super clubs.

  If you haven’t got access to such places, there are many other options as well as the huge house clubs, although sometimes aimed at slightly different crowd. Many of them are frequented by young Brazilians hoping to meet somebody new, rather than just dance. The floors are generally filled by people chatting and drinking, with a little bit of dancing too.
  Around Lagoa da Conceição there are many other options, with Avenida das Rendeiras having places such as John Bull Pub, Café del Sol and Chico´s with regular younger crowds. Jinga is somewhere between a bar and a club, with an older crowd for the samba bands. This is not the same as Carnaval samba, more of the kind where people dance together in couples. Both are called Samba, so we have no real way to differentiate them. Couples Samba perhaps?

  At Joaquina Beach, Kahuna overlooks the corner of the beach but the fantastic setting is spoiled by it being quite remote from other places, and possibly explains why this club in particular seems to change name regularly.  As Dunas sits across the road from the Joaquina dunes. It can be busy midweek too, with samba and forró nights bringing in regular numbers.  A little closer to town is the off-road Green Park, a larger place half-hidden in the trees on the Joaquina road. It plays host to different types of music, with reggae and rock bands and electronic music on the occasional nights when it opens, usually Saturdays.

  Another club opening more frequently every year is The Week, set on the shores of the lagoa next to Praia Mole Eco Village.

  In the city, the options are not as extensive as you might at first think. Cosmopolita and Concorde attract slightly different people, with the latter being one of Floripa’s most long-standing and popular gay clubs.

  Around Jurerê and Canasvieiras, the superclubs have competition in the likes of Life, which generally has electronic music plus live acts too, while Cafe de la Musique and Taiko are options for daytime and night-time beach clubs in Jurerê Internacional. Mynt Lounge in the huge resort complex at Costão do Santinho is another seasonal club on the north-east of the island while beach bars such as Pirata and Carpe Diem on Praia Brava have the occasional night event.

  As well as such regular nights, there are always flyers and posters advertising one-off nights. If beach parties are your idea of a great night, look out for the word Lual. This generally signifies a full moon event on the sand, with any kind of music including samba, reggae, electronic music and rock bands, often on the same night.

• Restaurants ( 0 Articles )
  

  The restaurant life of Floripa is good and varied, with options around the island from top class restaurants with wonderful views over the water, to cheap seafood straight from the fisherman’s boat or the oyster nets. There are island specialities and international chefs.
  The main centres for eating out include the centre of Florianópolis itself and especially the Beira Mar Norte road overlooking the bay; Jurere and Canasvieiras Beaches and their surrounding roads; and Lagoa da Conceição including Canto da Lagoa and Avenida das Rendeiras.

  The whole western side of the island, away from the city and the airport, seems to be one big oyster farm in the calm waters of the bay. The traditional fishing villages such as Ribeirão da Ilha in the south, and Santo Antonio da Lisboa and Sambaqui heading north, have developed into seafood cuisine centres. All have restaurants of various prices in wonderful settings, with decks over the water and oysters and seafood dishes such as moqueca, often cooked with ingredients taken out of the sea just before cooking.

  Away from these places, the restaurants on the beach at Pantano do Sul on the southern end of the island are popular day and night. Other beaches such as Joaquina, Brava, Santinho, Ingleses, Forte and Daniela are more popular during the day and very quiet at night. Many of the restaurants in these places only open while people are enjoying the sun on the beach.

  One place that is not quite on the Floripa map is the Coqueiros Via Gastronomica, heading south along the coast on the mainland side of the bridge. A few decent restaurants there have pleasant settings amongst the rocks, with the sound of the sea and a view of the island. They are generally cheaper than the equivalent restaurants of Florianópolis.

  In general, pizza places are very easy to find in Florianópolis as in the whole of Brazil. Sushi is also popular everywhere. One experience not to be missed is to visit a churrascaria, the traditional all-you-can-eat Brazilian barbeque. There are not a huge amount of these on the island, with Ataliba and Floripana being among the most popular on the Beira Mar Norte road heading towards the bridge. International cuisine such as Thai is not quite popular as yet in Brazil and still feels a little Brazilian at times, but can be found. Indian cuisine is yet to make a big hit, while Arabic and Chinese food seem to be still mostly of the fast food/shopping centre type.

  Seafood can be found absolutely everywhere on the island, as you would expect, not just next to the oyster farms. Portions can be huge, especially if you request the Sequencia do Camarão or similar Floripa favourites.

• Theatre ( 0 Articles )
• Shows ( 0 Articles )