Thursday, January 18, 2007

Rio de Janeiro

With two of three children away for ten days, we saw a rare opportunity to do some traveling as a couple. I have always wanted to visit Rio and do some of the most famous Rio things, including visiting Copacabana beach. So we found a friend of Sydney's whose parents were willing to take her in for a few days, and we loaded up the car and headed for Rio.


Everyone says that Rio is a very dangerous city. In fact, my boss says that almost every teacher that has ever visited Rio has been robbed or held-up. It's no wonder with huge favelas surrounding the city. The favelas in Rio make Sao Paulo's look much less impressive. We stayed at a nice hotel just off Copacabana beach, and even though this is high tourist season (Brazilian summer) our room only cost about $100 per night (including a very nice breakfast each day.) They upgraded us for free to a room with a view of the beach.

Our first order of business was supper. We had just traveled for about six hours and we were hungry. We couldn't believe our eyes when we saw that they had KFC! We don't have KFC in Sao Paulo and we have missed that "finger-lickin' good" chicken. When we got there and ordered, they told us that we would have to wait between 20-30 minutes because they had to cook up more chicken. So they gave us our drinks and five free chicken strips to hold us off while we waited - wow. We were hardly hungry when the food arrived, but we enjoyed our meal tremendously. The main differences between KFC in N.A. and S.A. is that in North America you get fries and coleslaw with your chicken. In Brazil you get rice and beans! Also, they don't use MSG in the food here, which makes the chicken taste much different (but better for you). We've basically been de-toxified from MSG and foods that contain it now start taste bad to us.

The next morning we spent on the beach working on our tans. The beach is huge, and very busy (as we expected.) We ended up having perfect weather that day. They are really doing a lot to upgrade to boardwalk with bathrooms and kiosks. It's first-class.

After lunch, we took a tour bus to the hot-spots of the city. (Well, the hot-spots for the not-so-adventurous. We aren't into the night-life scene.) You can see the pictures on the slideshow. The Maracanã stadium, cathedral, and corcovado were all more impressive than we expected. But the Carnival parade route (Sambadrome) was definitely under-whelming. The whole thinh is only 700 meters long. They don't parade all through the city like they do in North America. They come into the parade route and can see the end barely more than a quarter-mile ahead.

That night we ate at Domino's Pizza and it was definitely not the same as home. Very disappointing. We only had time the next morning to take a walk on the beach and check out before heading home, but our short visit was a great one and we didn't lose anything. So much for big, bad Rio. It was great to us!