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City of God (and cheese and banana sandwiches)
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This page could have had so many titles, one being city of contrasts; rich and poor-our cab driver from the airport informed us that Rio has a population of 7 million and 5 million live in Favelas (slums) so dangerous that the police won´t even go in there. But our home for 3 nights was in the more upmarket area of Ipanema, with Louis Vuitton just round the corner and the body conscious jogging on the beach, we´d definitely been sent to the right place. Our hostel was fab (Thank you Alice!)Clean, Safe and a great place to meet other people, having a Caipirinha or 4 around the pool.But hey, check out how nice this place is yourself . But I guess I should mention the dodgy electrics (not so uncommon in Brazil I´ve since discovered). We arrived back there one rainy afternoon to discover that all the power had been switched off as water was leaking through the roof and dripping from the light fittings, so we had an interesting evening getting showered and changed by candlelight. When the rain eventually stopped (another contrast, by the way was the weather; 42 degress the day we arrived, 22 and pissing down the next...didn´t we know it´s rainy season? Er, no!)the electrics were switched on again and all the light bulbs were full of water. No problem! Just take them off, empty them out, and away you go. Yup, nice and safe...
So, what comes to mind when you think of Rio? Well for me it was "beach, Statue of Christ on the mountain, Sugarloaf mountain, nightlife and ´the girl from Ipanema´". Well, we saw the beach on our first day, but and hour in 42 degree heat, with people coming up to you every 5 minutes asking if you want to buy jewellery, clothes, trips or whatever, was enough for us. We were going to see the Christ Statue, spent and hour on the local bus (just like the one in City of God, which was kind of cool, but also a little scary!) getting there only to be told that it was too cloudy to go up. Just our luck ... The weather also meant, no Sugar loaf mountain and no paragliding for Gordon. As for nightlife, well one night we went out to check out a few bars, got I.D´D (hello! I thought this was supposed to be a COOL city) trying to get into one and the next one, well, I thought it was ok, but I´d had a few before we even got there. I realised there were a few more men than women, but other than that I quite happily bopped away to the samba/rock group (don´t ask me how I danced to that music, I think I just sort of threw myself around a bit). The next day, however,my attention was drawn to the fact that there were actually about 200 men and about 7 stunningly beautiful women, all apparently, giving Gordon the eye....Obviously this is not normal behaviour (!) and I leave you to draw your own conclusions about this place.
We did manage to visit La Garota de Ipanema, the restaurant where `Girl from Ipanema`was written, and I was really pleasantly surprised. I´d read that it was a bit of a tourist trap, and, yeah there were a few tourists there, but it had a nice atmosphere, the staff were very helpful and ther food was fabulous! I had two wicked, perfectly done minute steaks and this on my first night on Brazil! Such a high standard couldn´t be maintained for the whole of our trip surely. Certainly not! The next day I read ´cheese and banana sandwich`on a menu and thought ´hey, maybe they know something I don´t´so ordered it (doh!). It tastes exactly as it sounds, is just wrong and don´t let any Brazilian try and tell you different.
So that was it, with a second day of rain, and with me having brought over some germs that were affecting my chest ( so no larging it in any clubs for me) we decided to quit the big city in search of some r´n´r.
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| 1. | City of God (and cheese and banana sandwiches) - Rio, Brazil Jan 10, 2005 |
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