or should I say, Brasil, uma parte. Well, maybe I shouldn’t as my brain refused to acknowledge the Portuguese and instead inserted Spanish which was just as bad as speaking English as I don’t think they understood a word I was saying, English or Spanish. I get ahead of myself.
So, Jason and I were in Brazil for 10 days, without the children as Jason’s parents came over and looked after the kids. A special kind of hell, having the in-laws over who you have absolutely nothing in common with except for their son. Anyway. 10 9 days in Brazil in August which is winter there, but their winter feels more like our early summer so I wasn’t exactly miserable. We spent three and a half days in Rio, then five and a half days in Buzios. I’ll tell you about Rio today and tell you about Buzios later in the month. :)))))
So we get to our hotel in Rio, Copacabana around 1pm or so, the flight was late leaving Hotlanta and we rolled the dice and took this shuttle from the airport to the hotel. The shuttle was kind of cool, it drove through most of the city and I was able to see a lot of the city but it did take forever. We got to the hotel and checked in, it was nice at the Marriott (I cashed in some of my points) and we took showers right away (why is it that over 12 hours of air travel makes one so filthy?) then walked around a bit, soaking up the sites, looking at the people.
We saw a few of these on the beach, this must have taken ages to do and it had an amazing amount of detail in it.
I must include the obligatory beach photo, but this day was a but cool, and I did take it later in the day, probably around 3-4 local time, remember it was winter and full dark at 6pm. Notice there aren’t too many people around.
They also have a bunch of kiosks on the beach, mostly bars, but we sw this guy there as well:
I thought it was interesting they had a “Beijing menu” while we were there, complete with cheeseburgers with this weird stir fry on top, fried rice sticks and something else that was weird.
The next day was Friday, time to go to the Sugarloaf. I should let you know that while I love thrill rides, I do detest things that go high and slow, i.e. ferris wheel, Jumbo ferris wheel (the London EYE), cable cars! Yes, one must ride not one but two cable cars to get to the top of Sugarloaf, which is not so bad for those who are not terrified of such or who have husbands that did not show them scenes from Moonraker. Here I am, going to my death, Goodbye World!.
Can you believe I rode in two of those!?! It was well worth the view, though.
One more
That’s the view of Copacabana beach from the top.
So we walked back from Sugarloaf to the hotel, via the Rio Sul shopping center where I did quite a bit of window shopping and we had lunch, then onto the hotel where we tried to go to the beach but it was too late in the day. We went back to the room, got changed and went to dinner. On the walk back from dinner to the hotel, we were caught up in a scam scheme. It was hilarious. Well, to me anyway. There we were walking down the street, and we were accosted by this shoe shine guy who we were prepared to keep walking by but he gestures to Jason’s shoe which had magically grown a heap of s***. Jason stands there while this guy cleans his shoe, and the guy is making a big deal of the stinky s***, using a brand new toothbrush, etc, etc, etc. I am giggling ,then the guy wants 20 reals for it! The nerve! If you ever go to Rio and walk down the Copacabana, watch out for flying s***!
Saturday! Beach day!
We get our suits on and take a walk down to the Fort Copacabana, stopping by a little cafe for breakfast on the way. The Fort was pretty neat and cost something like 5 reals to get into, so a real bargain considering how nice it was. I took a few more pics there.
This was a cool mural at the fort. Anyway so we walk around inside the Fort, no pictures allowed so sorry about that, then contine walking to Ipanema, then back to our beach where there were actual cabana boys to get you chairs towels and drinks and if you have ever been to the Copacabana beach this means something as you cannot move on this beach without getting sighted by every seller of anything you could want badgering you. You can buy beach towels, bikinis, jewelry, food, drink, tanning oil, futbol jerseys, purses, shells, beads, the list goes on and on. We finally left the beach as the sun got low in the sky, went to dinner then had some drinks at a kiosk along the beachfront that night.
Sunday! We did nothing, as I picked up food poisoning at some point the day before, I suspected the dinner, but it could have been anything. We had meant to go to the Hippie Market, but all I did was lie around in the Marriott watching the Olympics in Portuguese, hoping my innards had calmed down before our bus ride to Buzios.
And that is where I must leave as this blog post has gotten very long indeed. More later. Bye!
s\
I packed my lunch last night (and yes, I was able to find my way to work without a map), then on a second thought this morning, I placed a couple of these cookies in a baggie in my lunch bag. I just ate one. It was delicious. You need to try these. Now. Go buy them, right now. I hear 
. I am pretty glad that is over, this is my third time doing it, second win. I never even attempted last year, my life was just too crazy. It was slightly less crazy this year and I just managed to get it squeezed out. Honestly, it is a crazy thing to do. Especially the way I did it, which was to hand write the entire thing. My three main digits fingertip of my right hand are actually numb from writing 50495 words in 30 days with a pen and paper. Crazy.
