Day One-Arrived in Rio!

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6th September 2010

We made it! That was one looooong flight; at least we weren’t sat next to any crying children 
Monday 6th September started at 6.00am in London frantically packing the last things into any bag or box we could find. We eventually got it all done however and headed off to Heathrow. Had a bit of an emotional moment with Mum and Dad after we checked in, felt very sad that it would be six months until I see them again, so to cheer ourselves up, we went and had a slap up breakfast after we’d gone through security and had our very first travelling related wedding present! Simon, thank you very much for that, we had mojitos to celebrate our travels and they were delicious!

Didn’t realise that BA now have this mad video on demand things on their flights, it was a lifesaver, we both watched a lot of films over those 11.5 hours and apart from some hairy turbulence around the place that the Air France plane crashed last year (yes we were sweating a bit during that one...), it was an uneventful flight and soon we were landing in Rio de Janeiro!

We got through immigration without any problems, got our very first passport stamp and emerged out of the airport to find a taxi to our hotel. We used one of the booths at the airport and bought a voucher to Copacabana, pretty sure we got right royally ripped off as our Portuguese is rubbish but at that point we were past caring! We had a little bit of an issue communicating with the taxi driver but everyone eventually knew where they were going and we hit the road. It was about a half an hour cab ride to Copacabana and we got very excited when we caught our first glimpse of Christ the Redeemer all lit up high above Rio and I was amazed how hilly the city is, wasn’t expecting that somehow.... We decided to spend a couple of nights in a nice hotel before we started using hostels (it is our honeymoon after all!) and Miguel had sorted us out a discounted rate at the Pestana Rio Atlantica. Cheers Miguel, it’s very nice indeed! The stupidly long day hit us over the head at that point and when we realised it was 3.00am in England we decided to hit the hay.

The 7th September is Independence Day in Brazil and according to the guidebook, most places will be shut so tomorrow will be all about getting over the jet lag at the rooftop pool methinks!

Lots of love
Liz xx

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