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Published: March 2nd 2009
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Copa, Copacabana.....
Now I have been there. I have seen the Jesus statue and Sugarloaf Mountain (aka Sukkertoppen aka Pao de Sucar) and the Sambadrome. I have been to Rio de Janeiro during Carneval!
After using last weekend to get rid of a flue and to save up some energy, Kristian and I took the bus from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro late Sunday evening. There were some small problems getting our reserved tickets out, because it turned out that a copy of the passport was not enough. This was the only form of ID Kristian had, so he had to grab a taxi back home and get his real passport. But both of us got on the bus. And what a bus??!!! The bus had huge seats, air conditioning and lots of space for your feet. I can recommend taking busses in Brazil to anybody; I will for sure use the bus as transport vehicle in the future.
Our hostel was only a few streets down from Copacabana beach, so we found a local buss that took us directly there. After checking in we went straight down to the beach. With 4 km of beach
Copacabana
Hanging out at the beach... to enjoy, we found that surprisingly lot of it was occupied, but we managed to find ourselves a spot and spent a few hours enjoying the view. After a few hours it just got too warm, 34 degrees in the shade, and even warmer in the sun was too much for two Norwegian. After the beach we went home and slept for a few hours to charge up before the big night out. Everybody knows that is important to eat before drinking alcohol, so we found out that a bucket of KFC chicken should be consumed. Full of fried chicken we went down to Copacabana again to enjoy some cervejas! From here on out I think we continuously consumed alcohol for the rest of the night, so you can take that into account when you read about the rest of our night out. Down on Copa we met some Swedish friends from school and planned the rest of the night with them. We found out that this was a good night for experiencing the samba parade in the Sambadromo. The "drome" is a 1 km long street with stands on each side. It seats about 70000 people and samba schools
Sambadromo
We saw the parade from the stands up in the left corner parade through this street. This Monday night was special for the Sambadromo since it was the night when the premium samba schools were performing. The whole parade is actually a competition where judges give points to the schools based on different characteristics. After more beer and food, we took a cab to the drome and bought some tickets there. We were also so lucky that we got to try on some costumes that participants had used in the parade. Pictures will be posted on facebook when I get a hold of them. The whole parade finished at 6 o'clock in the morning, so tired and exhausted we went to bed after the sunrise.
Tuesday was a lazy day for us. We slept out, went out for lunch with some Italian and Brazilian friends. After that we met up with some other exchange students from our school on Copacabana. I hadn't tried the water yet so I used the opportunity to have a little sunset swim. Not really a swim since the currents in the area are dangerous and the waves were pretty big, but a dip in the sea. The water was actually in the low 20's, a change
Parade
Small part of a 10 hour(8pm-6am) long parade from the warmer Salvador (Bahia) coast. When the swim was over, a few cervejas were enjoyed on the sidewalk next to Copa we got back to our hostel and got ready for a new night out. This time it was decided that we were going to a place in Lapa, called Rio Scenarium. This was a three storey large building with different music on each floor. A great atmosphere and funny furniture which sometimes reminded me about houses I have seen on pictures from New Orleans... Once more we partied till dawn; the night was finished of with pizza at a really shady place in a shady (dirty) neighborhood. After a crazy taxi ride home, we went to bed even later than the day before.
On our last day in Rio we only relaxed a few hours on the beach before we took the bus home to Sao Paulo. The following days we spent doing several things. We spent time with a Brazilian friend named Alexandra (bought stuff for our apartment and went out for lunch with her father), we relaxed by the pool on the roof, went to house parties with the other exchange students, had lunch at Brazilian friends house with here family, went to a fancy club called Museum (restaurant that becomes a club), relaxed more by the pool and went out for Acai.
Acai is a Brazilian berry, and is served mixed with ice (becomes smoothie looking, but even more firm) and in my case with granola (musli) and banana. Maybe the only healthy food I eat here. Tomorrow it is time for school again. I expect the next weeks to be more intense, so I just have to roll up my sleeves.
Take care wherever you are in the world and welcome to Brazil! Good night 😉
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