At the Copa...Copacabannnnaaa...
Yup, we are in Rio de Janeiro, the plastic surgery capital of the world! (a plastic surgeon told me this info..:) Uh, I meacaine of the largest cities in Brazil....and I am staring out our hotel window at the broad expanse of the ocean and Copacabana Beach. We are on the 18th floor of the Porto Bay Hotel or as we lovingly refer it to it as "the Penthouse"..:) We arrived yesterday quite early since our flight was changed to O'Dark thirty. A 2 hour plane ride from Salvador and we were here. Our Rio guide was there promptly to pick us up and take us to our hotel. Both H and I were pretty out of it but soon we woke up after being taken to our new digs. They let us check in early, thank goodness. Arriving in our room, we immediately walked onto our little terrace and WOW! It was a WOW moment! Much more beautiful than I ever imagined for sure.
The guide told us on our 45 min. ride to the hotel that Rio has gotten a bad rap as far as safety goes. Just be smart, do not carry lots of cash, jewelry, etc. I was so relieved to hear this.
The minute we set foot on the beach, I felt perfectly safe. As safe as any big city anyways. After a snack in the room, we went for a run on the beach. There is a bike/run path along the beach for miles, onto Ipanema Beach and beyond. We ran about 10 min. when H felt a terrible pull in this bad calf. The old injury reared it's ugly head and we had to walk back. Damn! We are hoping that it is temporary and that we can give a run/walk shot at it today.
Heading to the beach in front of us, we picked up beach chairs and towels from the hotel assistant. I even brought my IPad. Soon after sitting a few minutes I laid down, rested my head on it and promptly feel asleep! The IPad pillow was perfect! We hung out for a bit there, then up on the rooftop pool above us at our hotel. The views of the city and beaches from up there are outstanding! A bit of cloud cover, it never got really hot at all. The summer breeze coming off the ocean makes it perfect weather wise so far.
About a half block away, we found dinner at an Arabian/Brazilian restaurant. We ate a totally vegetarian dinner and on the way saw "Fox Sports" setup near the beach-looked like Beach Volleyball Tournament was going to be played there? All of Brazil is abuzz with the fact that the World Cup Soccer Tournament will be played in several Brazilian cities in 2014. Then, the summer Olympics will be here in 2016. Our guide told us this is one reason why Rio is safer than before. The policia are apparently trying to take over the "favelas", which are parts of the city where Drug Lords have ruled in the past. The new effort is for these slums to be safer and more friendly when many Nations come to compete for these sporting events.
Today, we enjoyed a delicious buffet breakfast with everything you can imagine for breakfast-there was even little hot dogs...gosh I am not one for beans and hotdogs for breakfast but I am sure some are!
Our guide "Paulo" picked us up at 8:30 to make our way to the tram which goes up to the "Christ the Redeemer" statue. Paulo is a vast improvement from the last guide.This statue is probably the most familiar things folks think of when they think of Brazil. It is one of the 7 wonders of the world. I feel very blessed we got to see 2 of the 7 while we were in S.A. (Iguazu Falls plus this). The tram was a pretty steep 15 minute ride to the top. The air was a mass of fog on the ocean when we woke up today. It really looked like it might lift as the sun was trying to peek out. But we were not so lucky this time. The clouds socked in the famous statue most of our visit there. We could not see any of the city view we were suppose to see-guess I will have to rely on the picture of the picture! The sun did come out a very few moments so I got the Christ statue with blue sky in the background on a couple photos. On the way back, we got entertained by some musicians on the tram..
What we were "suppose to see" 
Christ the Redeemer
Trying to wait it out for the sun to come out..
We got back to the hotel around noon. Then, it happened...It finally happened..it rained all afternoon today! Oh well it had to happen sometime! Good thing we had not gone out to the beach to run yet today. H's leg is better, not perfect yet. So we settled for a run on the treadmill while watching the rain fall around us in the picture window of the ocean on the 20th floor. Not a bad alternative! :)
We enjoyed the rest of the day just hanging out..not a bad way to spend a Tuesday in Rio!
Rain/fog on the beach
No comments:
Post a Comment