Archives for November, 2008

Brazil!

About three weeks ago I went to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. I must admit, before the trip I embar­rass­ingly igno­rant about Brazil. When I thought of Brazil, the first three things that came to mind were: Brazil­ian bar­beque, Blanka from Street Fighter, and Adri­ana Lima.

After ask­ing peo­ple at work, and pok­ing around on the inter­net, I was pretty fright­ened of the coun­try; I got the impres­sion that I was about to enter a war zone. Regard­less, I still wanted to go. I spent about a month before­hand lis­ten­ing to Brazilian-Portuguese pod­casts, read­ing my guide­book, and psych­ing myself up for the trip by read­ing about plane crashes and kid­nap­pings.

I ended up hav­ing a fan­tas­tic time— every­one I encoun­tered in Brazil was so warm and friendly. And I love how Por­tuguese sounds. I even met one guy who lived Paris for a few years, because his mom is French, so he has dual-citizenship. My first reac­tion was to get down on one knee and propose.

Since I enjoy rank­ing things, I would place Rio de Janeiro a notch below Barcelona, and Sao Paulo a notch below Los Ange­les, in my list of favorite cities. I pre­fer pedestrian-friendly cities, packed with lots of muse­ums and things to see, so the idea of sit­ting idly on a beach all day isn’t very appeal­ing to me. Maybe when I get older, but not right now when I’m arthritis-free and can walk for days. Despite what I’ve said, I can’t wait to go back. I loved the lit­tle huts lin­ing the beach that sell fresh coconuts and beer. And I loved the food and try­ing all the dif­fer­ent fruits from the Ama­zon. There are other things I love about Rio and Sao Paulo, but those are the ones I can remem­ber right now (prob­a­bly because those are the things that mat­ter most to me).

See­ing a soc­cer game was one of the high­lights, because they are so fun and intense! Being a fan of a team auto­mat­i­cally signs you up to be a part of the cho­rus— every one sings through­out the game and there’s even a drum­mer in the audi­ence. I was told that no alco­hol is served because peo­ple can’t con­trol them­selves, and no bot­tles are allowed because boys will pee in it and throw it at the other team. This was a game between Vasco and Fla­mengo, two soc­cer teams from Rio:

Rio de Janeiro dur­ing the day:

The weather was awful, but I still got to see the tourist hotspots, like Sugar Loaf and Christ the Redeemer.

Sugar Loaf:

Christ the Redeemer statue, which, even though I was stand­ing right in front of it, I could only see a vague out­line because it was so foggy:

Rio at night, taken from Sugar Loaf:

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