Samba Show and Rio Day tour.

---

Typing this from Santos post-wedding but here´s a run down of our last couple of days in Rio before we flew to Sao Paolo....this is the first Dave entry so let´s see how it goes...

We were up relatively early on Wednesday morning to greet Rory and Jess. Spent the day in the sun at the beach in Ipanema. Saddled up with a box of beers from Mineiro´s mates (the Kevin Costner aficionado was absent on the day himself) and stayed there from 11.30am until about 4pm. Needless to say we almost all got a bit sunburnt.

It was a great day between playing sea ball, watching the girls get knocked over by the waves and listening to Rory haggle with the vendedores... the best moment being when he told a guy he could only buy a hammock from him if he supplied the two trees from which to hang it from!

That evening we went to a Samba show that included dinner beforehand. It turned out to be a bit of a mystery tour as we had no idea where we were headed, it was a great night though. We ate in a typical Brazilian Carretao restaurant where the waiters walk around with massive skewers of all different kinds of meat and keep adding it to your plate until you beg for mercy.

Having eaten our fair share we were driven on by our trusty van driver to the Samba show. The Samba show was very impressive and had a great start as a girl played keepy up with a footbal on stage for about 20 minutes before the show started, I´ve asked will she sign for Merrion next season. After this the show started and we saw some very entertaining Samba dancing as well as some impressive Capoeira (Brazilian fight dancing). Many caipirinhas were drank and the session finished up with a Pele lookalike getting members of the audience to participate in a Karaoke session, thankfully irish songs were not part of his repertoire.

On to Thursday and our last full day in Rio. Orlagh, Kev, Emma, Pedro and myself went on a day tour of the sights in Rio, we´d been meaning to do it all week but only got around to it on our last day! The day strated early with the bus picking us up at 815 and taking us, along with some other tourists, to Pao de Azucar. We took two cable car rides to get to the top where the views were amazing on what was another clear sunny day (Copious amounts of sun cream were applied after the previous day´s toasting at the beach!). There are wild marmoset monkeys living atop Pao de Azucar so it was cool to see them swinging around. After this trip we went for lunch where we sat with Simon (or Nigel as Pedro decided) who was off to study dolphins after his visit in Rio. Not a bad job to have.

Christ the Redeemer was the next stop where again there were amazing views of the city not to mention the 30 foot high statue of the man himself! Next we visited the Maracana which was disappointing as the stadium is closed for renovations in preparation for the 2014 World Cup Final. The outside of the stadium isn´t very impressive!

The trip finished off with a visit to Rio´s cathedral which is a massive cone shaped buliding that holds up to 20,000 people!!

That evening we went down to the stalls on Copacabana beach to buy some souvenirs, got some greasy (but good) food at a kiosk before returning to the usual Itaitiva kiosk (scene of the famous 7-0 victory) for a few more beers and caipirinhas. Luckily sense prevailed and we turned in relatively early (2am or so) so that we could make our flights to SP the next morning.

The next day we checked out (and got our washing machine threatened deposit back!) and flew down to SP, but thats a story for another day....

---