Olinda Othon Palace Rio de Janeiro

... the heat (about 24-28C). Swarms of people appeared on the streets at lunch time as people headed to food. We decided to do as the locals do and bundled into a restaurant place full of people. Weigh what you eat type place but posher than previous day. A bit of a gamble as we didn't know how much it would cost until we went to pay. I tried a bit of everything - lots of strange things I only half recognised. Gem had less choice but still plenty to eat - she ...

... don't look it. We got home at about 8pm, Frederico had arrived from Campo earlier and taken care of Martina. I collapsed into bed a little later, bringing an end to my first day of holidays. ----------------------------------- * This is a short test we carry out on confused elderly to quickly and roughly ascertain their degree of dementia. Questions include the year, date and time, place, current prime minister, recognising objects and the ability to count backwards from 20 to one.

... With good intentions and no doubt some positive results, there is significant criticism of the program that it is being used as a propaganda tool, ineffectually managed by the bureaucracy and not permanently solving the root causes surrounding Brasil's poverty and inequality. <br><br>Lula has acted prudently in reversing the country from the brink of economic collapse to one of the formidable BRIC countries. As an aside, this is an overused acronym as ...

... sugar loaf.Trouble was that when we got there the loaf itself was closed, we could only go to the hill halfway.It was still pretty stunning though.Watched the sunset,but it wasa little cloudy at that stage so wasnt too great.<br> <br>We ...

... passport and being Easter we had no way of sorting it out or even chatting with the Australian consulate. Wayne returned to the bus station and purchased our bus tickets to Campo Grande on the way to the Pantanal on Monday. When he returned I was in a better frame of mind and we decided to go and get some dinner. We had had nothing but cheese and ha rolls over the past 48hours so were hanging out for some really decent food. We found a restaurant that charges its buffet by the ...

... smell it) the Bloco ends and the local guy takes us to the next location which is kicking. It´s the gay area of Ipanema - takes us a while to figure it out as we are shatted from all the dancing. But there is a big party on so were not leaving. I´m too busy trying to chat up Nathalia in broken English, Spanish and some mixture with a couple of words in Portuguese (I thought Portuguese would be more similar to Spanish but while they may write in some ways similar, trying ...

... everything seemed to be going fine until 4:30am. I don't know how he managed it, or what he was trying to do, but the driver managed to get us stuck in the mud at the side of the road. We all had to get off the bus to help try to push it out of the mud, but that didn't help. It doesn't seem like the AA or RAC operates in Brazil, but luckily another bus gouing in the opposite direction turned up and was able to help us get out. So after an hour of being stuck we were back on the ...

... taken into the favela must be done so by hand. We saw some guys carrying a fridge up the hill. We were taken to a gallery showing art by locals, and to a day care run completely on donations. The views over the favela were fantastic. The favela we visited, like many of them, was located between very rich suburbs, which enables the residents to live cheaply in the favela while working in a ...

... bags in storage and then learnt (belatedly) that the instructor had called reception to say that he'd be about 15 minutes late. <br><br>The witch on reception had kindly not bothered to inform us, but we managed to jump on the internet upstairs until they arrived so it wasn't a big deal ...

... took the cog railway to the top of Corcovado, the mountain that has the "Christ the Redeemer" statue. We had lunch at a Brazilian restaurant where various meats are brought to your table on skewers and carved onto your plate, and we took the cable cars to the top of Sugar Loaf. It was a long and tiring day after our other travels, but it was fun and we had a good overview of Rio.<br><br><br><br>When we returned to the ...