7. Pressed Pork | 8 p.m.

Like their colleagues around the world, Brazilian chefs have been busy formulating contemporary takes on local dishes. Trindade is Belo Horizonte’s most notable entry in the “not your mother’s codfish” category. The restaurant is elegantly unpretentious — bare wooden tables and lighting a bit too bright to be called romantic. The menu ranges from Brazilian dishes of African origin, like moqueca, the coconut milk and seafood stew from Bahia state, to salt cod confit, inspired by the favorite fish of its Portuguese colonizers. Then there are favorite Minas Gerais ingredients served in recognizably foreign form, like the porco prensado, pork belly given the Gordon Ramsay treatment, pressed and slow cooked. Dinner for two without drinks is about 160 reais.

8. Via Berlin and Budapest | 11 p.m.

Berlin and Budapest have taught the world that there’s no better place for a party than a decrepit old building; that’s the idea behind the Mercado das Borboletas, or Butterfly Market, the name for the parties held in a complex of publishing and other businesses that has seen better days. In an upper level fallen into near complete decay, graffiti-covered walls and uneven concrete floors serve as a dance hall, with music varying nightly, from Brazilian funk to electronic. Some market stalls serve as bars; you might even find a VW bus-turned-hot-dog-stand.

SUNDAY

9. Art and Palms | 8 a.m.

Rent a car the day before so you can make the hour-plus drive on the BR-381 interstate and arrive at the artistic-botanic fantasyland known as the Inhotim by the time it opens at 9:30. On the way, shed all notions of what an art museum should be — unless your notions include a 275-acre adult playground with installations that range from the simply provocative to those that will have you dancing, napping and even taking a dip. (There are two works of swimmable art.) Add an igloo with strobe lights, an upside-down sailboat, and works by Brazilian and international artists like Hélio Oiticica and Matthew Barney, set amid 1,000 species of palm.

10. Country Buffet | 2 p.m.

Enough of that modern take on country cuisine; it’s time for the country cuisine itself. Countryside restaurants with pots bubbling on a wooden stove are a staple of the Minas Gerais experience, as are homemade sweets. Take the high, slow way back, leaving Inhotim via the road to Alberto Flores and looking for signs to Córrego do Feijão, a tiny community with a restaurant called Casa Velha. There, the husband-wife team of Fernando Ribeiro (your gracious host) and Suely Ribeiro (the skilled chef) have created a traditional self-serve Minas feast. Try front pork shoulder, country-style chicken, farofa (toasted manioc flour) with kale stalks, pork crackling that really crackles and, of course, beans and rice and other Brazilian fixings. Sit inside or take your plate to the narrow split-log picnic tables in the back. The service is as traditional as the vintage coffee cups. The buffet costs 41 reais.