Brazil World Cup 2014 - Day 3

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Today was mostly about travel. Our flight out of Rio was at 1.15pm, so in the morning we went to a nearby cafe and had breakfast, then walked a few blocks around a big avenue in Copacabana. In the morning time, the look and feel of the city was more like Chennai or Bangalore. We got back to our apartment around 10.30, cleaned up everything then took a taxi to Santos Dumont airport.

We were traveling to Goiania and connecting through the Sao Paulo airport. At the airport there was a big screen showing the netherlands v mexico knockout game, and we watched the full 2nd half along with a bunch of people. Dramatic finish to the game: Mexico were already 1-0 up when we started watching, then just when we thought there would be a shock upset, Sneijder equalized for the Dutch on 88 minutes. Then i was disappointed thinking we'd have to miss the 30 minutes of extra time since our plane was boarding soon.....then Netherlands won a penalty and turned it around to win 2-1 just in time as we left for Goiania.

Goiania is a fairly small city and the airport was really small too. Bryant had booked a rental car but the lady at the desk didn't speak English. There was a lot of confused back and forth, and I even went and found some other guy working in a different rental car company who could help translate. There were issues upon issues including the deposit amount, the credit card limit, additional fees, total fees etc etc before we eventually were taken to our ride. The guy in charge there with the car also did not speak English. The funny thing is all these people will ask Bryant a question in Portuguese, and when he says he doesn't know they'll just turn and ask me the same question assuming i must know since i'm not white! Some more back and forth with that guy as well as we struggled to understand each other, and we even went to his office and used Google Translate (which isn't perfect).

All told, we finally hit the road around 7pm and it was already quite dark. Luckily we decided to pay a little extra for the GPS and we were able to get on the highway which would've otherwise been tricky. We had booked a hotel in the city of Anapolis to spend the night there, and then drive on to Brasilia where we will be staying the rest of the time. The reason we decided to do it this way was the flights were just as expensive if not more, and this way we would have a car to drive around and visit sights outside the city of Brasilia where we would be a long time.

Some trouble again taking the right exit to get to the hotel but we eventually got there around 8pm and to our great relief the guy at the reception spoke perfect English! When we asked him about it he said he had actually lived in Virginia for 10 years through middle school and high school. His siblings managed to get citizenship but for whatever reason he couldn't and came back. Anyway, the hotel was right on the highway, we didn't see any restaurants nearby and really didn't want to drive again so just had dinner at the hotel we were staying in.

Tomorrow after breakfast we will leave around 7.30 am to get to Brasilia which should be around a 90-minute drive. We're staying in another rented apartment there much like we did in Rio, although this time the tenant and his roommate will be staying with us in a separate room in the same house. For now, we're just enjoying the relative increase in space and facilities in the hotel compared to the tiny apartment in Rio.

Will write again tomorrow, and of course tomorrow we are attending the France v Nigeria game at the Estadio Nacional in Brasilia!

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