Your plan:
arriving at GIG at 630 am on Thursday
Thurs: morning flight to Salvador
Thurs-Sunday 4 days: Salvador
Sunday: Fly to either Rio or Sao Paulo, 2 nts
Tuesday: Fly to either Sao Paulo or Curitiba (or somewhere else?), 2 nights
Thursday: Fly to Brasilia, day and a half
Friday at 11pm flight home
My ideas:
Curitiba is boring for a tourist, albeit a fairly tranquil place to live. I wouldn’t bother.
I am a huge architecture fan. I am not a fan of the dated concrete of Neimeyer. The best piece of design in town IMO is the JK Bridge by Alexandre Chan. There is also one mall whose structure is fairly interesting. I spend time in Brasilia with friends who live there; otherwise I would avoid the place, no regrets. Also, it is hard to get around without a car. The most fun IMO are the two big swimming pools in the National Park at the tip of the Asa Norte. Occasionally the art museum has a show worth visiting. There is usually music at night in some of the bars on the shopping streets of the superquadros. The expensive restaurants I have been to are pretentious and pretty bad, esp. for the price. At night the area next to Lagoa Paranoa is lively, but expensive, and during the day, the lake has water sports.
The “must-see” you are missing are the Colonial towns in the mountains of Minas Gerais. You can fly to Belo Horizonte and take a 2 hr bus to Ouro Preto, Or you can bus from Rio (overnight?) to Tiradentes. The other significant ones in that area are Mariana, Sao Joao del Rei, and the magnificently dramatic sculptures in Congonhas. I would see these before I thought of including S.P., Curitiba, or Brasilia.
A potential schedule:
You could get to Minas from Rio, then fly on to Salvador, and finish in Brasilia just before your flight (that same day).
The site
www.salvadorcentral dot com is a wonderful, information filled site written by a long term expat musician. A good plan IMO is to sightsee in the overcast mornings (Pelourinho, Solar de Uniao, Bomfim church, Mercado Modelo), go to the beach in the scorching afternoons, and find some music in the evenings after dining al fresco in the breeze that comes up. Tuesday nights are the “bencao” with lots of music and movement in Pelourinho. Rio Vermelho has a fun night scene on the plaza with acaraje and beer, and music clubs (Casa da Mae). Itapua also has a night scene on its plaza with acaraje and beer. There are beaches all along th city coast line from porto da Barra to Itapua, accessible by local bus. You could go to the beach villages of Morro do Sao Paulo/Boipeba or Guarajuba/Praia do Forte for a night or two.
Need more? Just ask.