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Published: October 3rd 2006
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Approaching Rio
Rio is huge...much bigger than Mansfield! Our flights to Rio did not go according to plan. Manchester to Heathrow was delayed, BA then parked up at the wrong terminal. We had to wait for buses to escort us to the right terminal which took a long time. Making our way between terminals was not easy...Heathrow is not the best labelled/signposted airport in the world! we only just made it to our flight! Our connecting flight from Sao Paulo to Rio was also delayed due to the cleaners having to come onto the plane and dust between the aisles! Luckily when we arrived in Rio we passed through immigration with no mention of a yellow fever vaccination and instead we were greeted by a woman dressed like she was off to a luxury casino (stilletos and flowing black dress) and a saxophonist playing the girl from ipanema.
Note that Rio airport, or rather the whole of Rio (more on that later) could do with a bit of a facelift...this place is stuck in the 1960´s, not that this is necessarily a bad thing! After driving around in circles for what seemed like several hours, the driver finally found the street address where our apartment was located and
Copacabana beach on a dull day
At the copa...copacabana..the wettest place north of havana! we were greeted by the owner, Paul. Now Paul was a strange guy, like something from the ´Good the Bad and the Ugly movie´...he was probably the bad and the ugly! He was a man of few words but decided to escort us around the one bed apartment and show us how everything worked, including the toilet, the shower, the TV (incidently there was a Jéan Claude Van Damme film on TV at the time!!)
The apartment is ok, just like the pics but a little shabbier. The worst thing about it is the lack of decent bedsheets (no we arent snobs!), they are all scratchy añd dont fit the bed either! Its been 3 days since we arrived and its either rained or been cloudy, today we had some sunshine...yipeee! So obviously the beaches which yesterday represented something similar to Brighton and Blackpool, were today a lot nicer!
As you can see from the pic Copacabana beach is nice, but is better on a sunny day. Rio is best described as a mixture of Amsterdam, Barcelona and Prague with nice beaches thrown in. Despite the weather being on the cool side, the Barzilians are still wearing their
string bikinis and little else to walk aorund in, not to mention the blokes walking round the shopping centre in their swimming trunks! Not all the women are easy on the eye either (imagine your granny in as string bikini and you get the picture!). Brazilians are obsessed with cycling shorts too (full length part length and short) all very tight fitting. Whatever the age, they are all so proud of their bodies!
The beer here is fab. Ask the waiters for dois chopp por favor (impressed?) and you get two of the best Brahma beer, ice cold for 60p each! Food however is a different matter, lots of snacks such as crisp fried chicken, deep fried cod balls, deep fried cheese balls, pastries filled with cheese and meat...do you see a pattern emerging, if it has cheese or pastry and is deep fried, they LOVE it. Its impossible to find anything without cheese and pastry, but we are managing ok, as the fresh fruit and veg from the Tesco of Rio (Zona Sul) is brilliant. Apart from the good old misto quente (ham and cheese toastie) for lunch we had a really bad experience the first time we
Centro building
Looks like a massive rubiks cube. ate out. Lets say you cant rely on pizza and risotto to be the same the world over!
Saying all that though, Rio is a great city of contrasts. We took a day trip to the centro area...really nice architecture, so different to the concrete apartment high rises of copa and ipanema. The next few days we plan to do the corcovado statue and the sugar puff mountain thingie. Should be an adventure, particularly as surprisingly few people speak english here and you can count the numbers of tourists here on two hands. Our portugese is improving so not to worry there though as we can now fluently say hello and thank you in Portugese...:o)
More to come...
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