Transamerica Araraquara

This hotel used to be the top hotel in the city for many years. The service is pretty nice and they have employees who speak English. The TV sets in the room are good and the rooms are ample and very clean. The beds are comfortable. They are near a police station, but even so, the number of homeless and drug ******* hanging outside the church across the street made us feel unsafe. The hotel building, however, scared me a bit more than the panhandlers because it was built in the same time period as the local theater and sports centers, both of which are decaying. The former is even closed because it is deemed unsafe and could collapse. The former has had times when its safety was also questioned. During the years of the dictatorship when Brazil was obsessed with "great projects," places like these were built cheap and grandiose. A lot of investments ended up in the pockets of corrupt politicians who either pocketed part of the money budgeted for a project or looked the other way when inspecting construction work. I am not saying this building will follow the same path as the other big buildings in the city, only that I was a bit scared when I looked at cracks on its brutalist architecture. Aside from that, the breakfast was pretty good, and the top floors offer gorgeous views of the sunset, particularly when there is pollution from the burning fields and the skies are tinged with orange colors.