Day one of our Rio de Janeiro excursion:
We rose early Sunday morning (June 17th) to begin
our thrilling journey into Rio de Janeiro, a cidade das maravilhas. The journey
was pretty uneventful. Sasha and I listened to a Pimsleur Portuguese Lesson on
the bus and repeated the phrases as we were directed. As we said in unison, “Eu
sou brasileiro. Eu sou Americana,” in our flawed, robotic accents, we looked up
and noticed an old Brazilian woman laughing at us. LOL literally, all three of
us. We arrived in Ipanema and checked into our hostel. I met an Israeli girl
who was staying there – she was in the midst of her post-IDF world travels,
which is a common tradition (as I learned during my winter trip to Israel). Her
next destination was New York, where she would stay with friends that she met
on the birthright trip she went on as a soldier. This warmed my heart as
I fondly thought of my Israeli birthright friends (shout out!).
As soon as we got settled, we met up
with Liz, Emma, Georgia and Carole, who had arrived earlier in the day. We
explored the streets and watched some lively Brazilian senior citizens work out
on the exercise contraptions in the public park (why don’t they have these in
the U.S. – it’s just like a playground for adults, and we saw them everywhere!).
Eventually we settled on a pizzeria to satisfy our hungry tummies. Turns out
Brazilian pizza is very different from American pizza, and it’s quite
delicious! Following our banquete saboroso, Liz, Sasha and our lugged our
satiated bellies to Ipanema beach. The sound of the waves was mesmerizing, and the
outline of Dois Irmãos (“Two Brothers,” the two mountains on the western edge of the
beach) loomed in the darkness. We frolicked along the sandy shore,
getting hit with huge waves that made us feel like we peed our pants for the
rest of the night. But we didn’t care. It was magical. We spied on a passionate
couple far down the beach and yelled “paixão!”, practicing the Portuguese nasalization
of the “ã”. We carved it in sand and pranced around it as the waves slowly
washed it away. A magia do Rio had hit us.
The three of us had our hearts set on Bossa Nova
for the night (we opted out of the Favela Funk party that was advertised at our
hostel), so we searched for a Bossa Nova club/bar. Unfortunately it was a
Sunday night, so we weren’t as lucky as we had hoped. We found a really nice
one but the cover was pretty steep. The bouncer let us check it out, so we
enjoyed about a minute of lovely, live Bossa Nova and then decided that was
enough (a.k.a. we were feeling stingy). It was a delightful one minute, don’t
get me wrong. We explored some more and found a cute little café/bar with a
live guitar player, and we enjoyed drinks and brigadeiros (described by Wikipedia
as a “Brazilian chocolate bonbon). Highly enjoyable. After a while we noticed
that the guitarist was actually singing in (heavily accented) English, covering
many songs we knew. How’s that for a cultural experience!
At this point, we found ourselves droopy eyed with
exhaustion, so we headed back to our hostels and slept like angels under the
protection of Cristo Redentor (you’ll hear more about this dude later).
Fotos:
Get a workout while you watch your kids on the playground at the park. Novel idea! (Elliptical trainers on the left, weight-like machines on the right)
Frolic in the waves of Ipanema!
Bebidas e brigadeiros
Fotos:
Bebidas e brigadeiros
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