Day 122 - Sugar Loaf Mountain, Cristo Redentor and Some Crazy Steps

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Due to only having one full day in Rio we thought the only way to see all the sights was to book on a city tour. Unfortunately 40 other people also fancied a bit of sightseeing today (no word of a lie). Luckily we got split into three groups, and were able to walk around the sites at our leisure, first up was Sugar Loaf Mountain. The mountain rises nearly 400 metres above the harbour, and it took two cable cars to reach the top, each level providing different, but equally spectacular, views. At the top Chris exclaimed, “Monkey!” To which I replied “What?” as he has taken to calling me monkey. It was in fact a real monkey, dancing all over a nearby tree. Cute!

Next stop was lunch, the renowned “per kilo” Brazilian style barbeque. A salad buffet in the centre (by salad, they also mean chicken dished and spag bol) and a man with a million meat skewers at the back. I saw the meat in the buffet and didn’t realise there was “proper meat” to be had, so missed out.

After lunch we visited the infamous Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer). Constructed in the 1920’s, it is 40 metres tall and 30 metres wide, weighing in at 635 tons. It was amusing to watch the hoards of tourists lying on the ground to get the perfect shot, often with subjects posing with arms outstretched. Of course, we joined in.

Then to the football stadium, the biggest in the world and host to the 2014 World Cup, we were only allowed to view it from the outside as there was a game on that night. A little peeved by this as it had been advertised as part of the tour, which had not been discounted to take account of the closed stadium, but on our last day we could not muster up the energy to complain.

The Carnaval Samba Dome was a little dull with nothing going on, but I got to try on a costume which was ace. Desperate to go one day, we learnt that tickets for the evening range from £20-£40 (not bad except that a dorm room in a hostel will cost you £50!). Or you could hire a box for the week for £20,000!!

Then onto Catedral Metropolitana, which you will see from the photos was the most bizarre looking cathedral ever constructed!

Finally we visited “Escadaria Selarón” in the Lapa district: 250 stairs measuring 125 metres long, which are covered in over 2000 tiles collected from over 60 countries around the world! Apparently they feature in Snoop Dog’s video for “Beautiful.”

Tour over, we returned to last night’s sushi restaurant for our final dinner in South America! In honour of this, we topped last night’s 42 piece platter with a 55 piece one! Delicious!

Chris's Corner

You can't exactly take the best photos of a stadium from the outside, over 100,000 seats in the Maracana and we couldn't see a single one. Seeing a bus load of Japanese tourists turn up at the Samba Dome took my mind off it though as they all tried on costumes and looked hilarious! They all headed off to the main street in the Samba Dome, not quite the real Carnival but a very funny version of.

Sushi again but by far the best Sushi we have ever had with such a variation of pieces and fantastic Sashimi. It's a shame that Rio is a little far to go next time we fancy Sushi and we've run out of days to eat it again! Have to hope there's some good stuff in Manchester when we get back.

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Photos

55 Pieces of Sushi
Our last supper!