Brazilian Cookies: An Epic day.

The last 25 hours have been the things that vacation blogs are made of, not real life with work involved on a Wednesday night through Thursday night blog material. I know I have over a week to catch up on, but that's going to have to wait.

My project wraps up tomorrow but I tried to get the final pre-wire scheduled for today or yesterday since my brother arrived in São Paulo today and I was hoping to fly back. Sadly, it got scheduled for 3-5 pm tomorrow. So, I worked to get my materials ready for yesterday, which I did (as in finish the work for the project). When my manager realized that I was done, asserted that if I had nothing to do, why come to the office today. I couldn't have agreed more. So, I finished up and left the office so I could meet up with a guy I had met last week through a friend. He'd invited me to join him for some beach volleyball. This is where the vacation-ness all begins.

I left my place around 7:30 and walked the mile down the beach to get to the beach volleyball class that started at 8. We did drills for 45 minutes on Ipanema beach under lights with the ocean crashing in the background followed by three games of 3-on-3 beach volleyball. The drills were a pretty intense workout and we built up quite a sweat. What better way to wrap it up than a jump in the ocean? Soaking wet we stopped by a place for some dinner and a beer. Wasn't too hungry so I had a bowl of fruit, a cake with strawberries on top and a beer. Exhausted, I called it a night and was asleep by 11.

Woke up pretty early feeling great. Lounged a little; headed down for breakfast at the flat around 9 and headed for a walk along the beach. Walked for about an hour with a brief shopping stop to pick up a pair of shorts. I hadn't planned on a day off so I didn't bring any other than a bathing suit. Took some pictures which is in the album below.

The day was absolutely clear and gorgeous, so I decided to hit the Cristo (Christ the Redeemer statue). The views were stunning. On the tram on the way up, my camera crapped the bed. When I went to turn it on, it would extend the lense them make funny sounds and the screen would just say E18. This happened repeatedly. I even tried the usual rememdies ... remove and re-seed the battery; shake it; hit it against the chair (I've found that effective with many electronics but wouldn't advise it for others). Nothing. I was pretty annoyed, given that I'd already taken photos with it that morning and I was re-visiting the freakin' site to see AND get better photos. Oh well, what can you do?

So, I got up to the monument site and it was pretty much all that it is cracked up to be. Awesome. The views are amazing. Today, there happened to be a full police band up there getting ready to play. I wandered around, enjoyed their music, eavesdropped on other tourists. You know, the usual. Then I decided to try my camera again. I pulled it out of my pocket, knocked it against the stone railing once or twice, then tried to turn it on. Magically, it worked. Amazing how happy one can be taking pictures when 10 minutes prior it seemed impossible. I had already thought about writing the story of it being broken, looking for canned shots online and saying that's pretty much what it looked like :)

From there, I headed to Sta. Teresa, an artist neighborhood in Rio. It also happens to be prone to robberies. I had gotten warnings from various people about it, but I wanted to see if I could find some cool artwork to remind me of Rio. After my camera died, I was all about seeing if someone robbed a busted camera from me. I already had most of my cash stashed in a hidden internal pocket so I wasn't too worried. Once it started working again, I went back to being a little more cautious. I kept taking the memory card out when I wasn't using it in case someone did actually steal it. The camera is old and my backup, but I didn't want to lose the photos. The neighborhood was really quite neat.

There were some cool art stores, some with artists painting in them. Nothing really got me to excited, however, so I just wandered. A buddy had emailed me a restaurant recommendation that I forgot to write down. I also forgot my GorillaPod (sweet camera tripod-thingy) so there are zero photos of me. All I thought I remembered from the recommendation was the street number, 264. Where the cab dropped me off was 400, so after wandering for a bit, I headed for 264. Lo and behold, there was a restaurant there called Espirito Santa. The place had a really neat patio out the back with great food. Had namorado viúva - namorado is a type of fish here. White, pretty meaty. It had crushed Brazil nuts on top and it was on a bed of grilled, skinny hearts of palm. (Happens to be the first dish described in the NYT review linked above.) It was tres cool.

Took "The Santa Teresa Historic Tramway" down from there to the city center. The trolly is ancient, bright yellow and very cool. I managed to snap a couple cool photos, then my battery died. Seriously. That camera was as roller coaster today! I believe you pay if you sit, not if you stand. I was standing. The tram took me right to the heart of Rio. Where it dropped me off was very cool. The buildings were some of most modern I've seen in Rio. Especially such a close collection of them. I wandered from the center towards Copacabana. After walking for over an hour, I hopped in a cab to finish the trip to Copacabana as I was pretty tired.

I walked almost the entire length of the beach there, buying a pretty neat painting along the way. At that point, I was completely spent so I hopped in a cab to get back to my hotel so I could rest up a little before heading to yet another beach volleyball lesson. I needn't retell the experience because it was pretty much identical to the night before, including jumping in the ocean, but I only had fruit and beer for dinner, no cake.

That brings me to now, where I'm in bed ready to get some rest. Given that this was a Thursday, a workday, I think it may go down as one of my most memorable.