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Published: January 19th 2008
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Well where to start.....
Firstly Brazilian food! I would say the speciality is meat, meat and more meat, it is ridiculous and fortunately ridiculously good. Every restaurant sells steak and if you order it the amount you get would cost a fortune if the same was ordered in England. It is all served medium rare- perfect!!!! One night Shane and I ventured to a meat restaurant in Copacabana, it was a buffet costing 19$R, approx 6 English pounds. There was a huge choice of pasta, salad etc on the food stand and then meat was bought around on skewers and the chef would slice the desired amount on to your plate. Steak, sausages, chicken, beef, it was insane, especially since all the meat was beautifully tender. Unfortunately the experience ended with both of us feeling sick at the thought of any more meat and as I rarely eat red meat at home I think my body must have been in a state of shock. Many of the restaurants also have a system where you help yourself to a buffet and the meat stand and then your plate is weighed but this is usually an expensive option.
However, In eating all
this meat, I have managed to achieve one of my missions, of which I have three. These involve Shane and what I want to have him doing before we get home...
1) To eat his steak medium rare, always the tastiest, none of this typical British well done rubbish. This mission I have just about achieved, the words, "I think i´ll eat my steak like this from now on" did leave his lips, i promise.
2) To enjoy fish. Good seafood restaurants next to good fishing coasts are amazing and sushi bars equally so, and... as of yet I have had no joy in venturing to one because the boy doesn´t eat fish and won´t even try none the less!!!!
3) To enjoy good bloody red! He won´t touch red wine even though he loves steak and we are heading to Chile where i´m sure the price of a good bottle will be considerably satisfying- yum! Definitely have to have him understand this pleasure.
Anyway... on to the bars, or lack of.... Brazil is very strange in the way that it seems to have very few bars, instead the Brazilians have little side street cafes in which the locals
gather and sit out on chairs in the street eating and drinking beer. They tend to only head out at about 1am and eat very late also. The local beers from Rio that prove the most popular are Brahma, Skol and Itiapava. Skol leaves a little to be desired and tastes a little cheap but the other two are really great, better than a lot of beer we have tasted at home. Club wise there are a few to choose from but they are expensive for travellers and they have a very strange system. Clubbers have to buy a card for a certain price and everytime they get a drink the card is scanned and they have to pay the total at the end. If the card is lost a huge fine is required. This system is really over complicated since drunk people, and yes, especially myself, have a tendancy to lose or misplace things and as well as this a huge queue starts to develop at the finish just to pay.
As for the people, the men are beautiful, skin like chocolate that varies between 16 different shades and they all look like athletes. The women are beautiful
also, it is nice to see that Brazilians don´t follow the obsession London and Hollywood have with the size 0. Brazilians women are very curvacious, big hips and big booties are popular!! I know! Imagine!! Haha. We have met some wonderful people in our hostels. There were two Irish lads who were extremely good for the old banter, one of which sunbathed for one hour with factor 20 on and ended up getting 2nd degree burns and having to visit a doctor- oh dear! We met two Irish girls who, if possible, were even whiter than the two Irish guys. There were a few Argentinians, including my favourite, Estaban, who is a novelist and journalist with many things already published, just a pity that I can´t understand any of his writing 😞 He has a house in Beurnos Aires and has told us to contact him when we get there as he wants to show us around which should be helpful. A Tunisian, Nahbil, who looks like Ronaldinho and therefore we nick named him Ronny, though he gets it all the time so I don´t think it went down too well- even the favela kids shouted this at him (but
seriously... see the pics)! A danish girl and many Brazilain girls. Of course, they all make the effort to speak English and we feel ignorant 99.9% of the time.
I´ll sign off here by saying we are having an amazing time and despite the bad reputaion that Brazil and especially Rio seems to have, the country is full of culture and is truely beautiful, definitely a place that everyone should see within their lifetimes.
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