Guest Post by Cheryl Williams

Arriving in Rio in the evening we planned on taking an uber to our accommodation, but that  proved to be a bit more difficult than expected. We realized that they won’t pick you up right at the bus station, and felt a bit victorious when we figured out that a gas station a few blocks away was the right place to wait. And wait we did…we had driver after driver drop our ride until we were finally picked up. Apparently there was a nearby accident that was causing trouble.

Beautiful Accommodations

Our accommodation in Rio was stunning! Marieke’s sister’s cousin-in-law (surely there is a term for that?), Caroline, lives in Rio with her partner and their kids. They arranged for us to stay at a friend’s place and it was wonderful! It was a restored old building from what must have been the heyday of Rio. Definitely felt like it could have been in Paris. We felt very lucky to have a big, beautiful space in a wonderful location.

Our plan was to spend the first night in Rio at a football match. We went for some dinner first, and then were going to catch an uber to the stadium. None of us are that keen on football, but we did want to go and enjoy the atmosphere. While we were waiting for our dinner (which followed the pattern of the day of being slightly less-smooth than expected – we confused the poor server and he only thought we ordered half the food, and none of the beer we actually wanted), Jon noticed the football game warmup was on the TV in front of us…and then we came to the realization that the pouring rain we were hearing outside the restaurant was also very present on the football field, and presumably in the stands as well as it was not a covered arena. Our limited interest in the football game quickly diminished to non-existent levels and we called it a night.

Time to Be Tourists

The next morning we woke up to beautiful sunshine. Steph and Marieke were planning a day of errands and hanging out in the apartment as they had already been to Rio a few years previously. Jon and I set out to do the touristy things. We got to the base of Christ the Redeemer statue and determined that this was going to be one of the more intense/busy experiences of our trip. It was 9:40am, and we got tickets for the 11am tram as that was the earliest we could get. We asked what time we should return to catch our 11am train…and were greeted with blank faces and told to go wait in line. We waited in line very curiously wondering what would happen when we got to the front of the line before our ticket time. It turns out that was not an issue as it took the full amount of time to get through the line. Our tram departed at exactly 11am and gave us the suspicion that perhaps there was more organization to the chaos than we could see… Though it was busy at the top of the tram, we enjoyed the view tremendously, especially appreciating the mostly clear skies enhancing the views.

Our afternoon activity continued on our theme of touristy things with great views and slightly confusing ticketing systems. We headed to sugarloaf mountain which features a series of two gondolas that provide gorgeous vantage points of the beautiful city and oceanscape below. We’d bought tickets online during our lunch break, but got a notification that we’d need to print our passes. This led to us first having to download an app, then get sent into an administration office where they printed out a voucher for us, which we then had to take to a box office around the corner where they finally printed tickets for us. Not totally sure what the benefit of purchasing online was…Anyway, once we got our tickets we thoroughly enjoyed our time at Sugarloaf. The views were just stunning and the gondolas were pretty fun.

Meal with a View

The evening included going out for dinner with our lovely Rio hosts Caroline and Sylvain. We went up to the Santa Theresa district to try out a restaurant they had heard of but not tried before. The food was delicious, the setting and view was awesome, and the company was great! And best of all, no lines to get in! The service was a little lacklustre, but apparently that’s Rio for you.