Rio? What a crazy idea!

---

For a long time, we had planned to visit Seoul for spring break. We loved it when we stopped over there last year, and wanted to see more. For us, Seoul was pretty much set in stone. But.....

We started looking at other places. We first thought of doing Israel/Jordan. Then out of the blue, Rio was an idea. We did not have Brazilian visas, so it would take some quick action to make it happen. I had to fly to Chicago and get our visas. Bad weather prevented me from doing so at first, and I thought Brazil just may not happen. It came down to the last day that I could safely get the visas done, before I was finally able to drop off our passports at the consulate. The visas would be ready for us on Monday March 24. We planned to depart on Monday, so hopefully they would be ready!

On Monday morning, we hired a car one way, so that we could drive to Chicago to get our visas and then drop the car off at South Bend. We left at about 9am, and were at the consulate at just before noon. We could pick up our visas at noon, so it was perfect timing. We had the visas within 10 minutes, and then were off to South Bend.

We arrived at South Bend at around 4pm, turned in the car, and checked in for our quick flight to Detroit. We flew a Delta Connection CRJ-200 and I was in seat 6C. We had about an hour or so before our connection to Sao Paulo, so we just waited. At 8pm, we were on Delta flight 53, a 767-300 to Sao Paulo. We cleared for business class, and I was in seat 1D. It was a mostly smooth flight of 10 hours. I had the meal of braised short ribs with a few gin and tonics, and then went to sleep. An hour before arriving, we had a light breakfast.

---