Rio De Janeiro: Ramblings
“At the Copa, Copacabana, it’s the hottest spot North of Havana…” Wait just a second. Last time I spun my globe around, it seemed Rio was in the Southern hemisphere. Making Havana a fair bit North of Rio. What, did Barry Manilow skip geography in school that day to attend gay band (redundant) class? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Anyhoo, he did have it correct that Copacabana is pretty smokin’. We actually stayed at the Copacabana Palace, and thanks to American Express and the other J’s stunningly good looks (and my wit and charm;)..hmm maybe not, we were upgraded to a huge killer suite with an awesome view of the beach. But alas, our dreams were dashed by 3 straight days of torrential rain (translation: no beach time and no thong/speedo watching) No ‘Brazilians’ you could say.
So what’d we do? Drank & ate like pigs, kittens! But that was not weather related. More like Status Quo in a different country. We prowled around a fair amount. But not so much on the back streets like we usually do. As much as we were warned about Rio’s crime being a little over-hyped (if that’s the right descriptor for crime), we paid heed to one of Grand pappy VdV’s sayings: “If you don’t go looking for trouble, trouble prolly won’t find you.” Occasionally that crazy old bastard made some sense.
So what’re some of the random tidbits we noticed in the land of Cariocas? Check it:
- Portuguese sucks as a language! I mean, we had just limped through Argentina on our sub-standard Spanish, but it’s easy enough to get by. Bueno, Cervesa, Por Favor, yada yada. But Portuguese is like Russian meets Farsi. OK, not, but still definitely not a romance language, let’s put it that way. Lots of ‘X’s interjected and all-in-all not instinctive. And too many syllables for simple words like ‘Thanks‘. In Portuguese it’s Obrigado. 4 syllables. And I always wanted to add ‘Mr. Roboto’ after saying it.
- If you look at Rio in a narrow enough lens, it’s an absolutely gorgeous city. And by that lens, I mean
Copa, Leblon and Ipanema and surrounding areas. Awesome beaches, huge granite cliffs falling into the ocean and lakes, great views of the downtown areas, tons of both Flora & Fauna, architectural feats like Cristo Redentor (AKA Christ The Redeemer, AKA That Big Dude on the Mountain), Sugarloaf Mountain, a rain forest right in the city, and all that jazz. Wait! Holy crap VH1 is actually playing a complete marathon of Madonna’s best videos. Yes in South America they actually PLAY VIDEOS on MTV and VH1…anyway, sorry. Back to Rio. - Those aforementioned rain forests followed us around for 3 entire days like a stalker. I know that makes no sense. Rain forests are stationary. What I am trying to communicate is, it was almost 72 hours straight of near-monsoon weather.
- The beaches, even though we couldn’t lay on them or we’d get swallowed up like quicksand, we believe would live up to the hype. Ipanema especially.
- They make wicked sand sculptures.
- They are totally psyched for 2016. That said, they have their work cut out for them to clean things up a bit.
- They have slums called Favelos. Mostly gang run, they are the slums of Rio where a huge portion of the population lives, and lived below the poverty line. They’re rampant through out Rio. There are tons of ‘tours’ available. We passed.
- The sidewalks around Copa, etc are beautiful. Yeah sounds like a pretty lame observation. But it’s true! They’re made out of small chunks of black and white stone in beautiful patterns throughout many parts of the city.
- They have great food in Rio (more later). Awesome beef, seafood, pasta and….yes! Thin crust pizza!!
- As opposed to BA it’s expensive. Up there with NY or SF, at least for the touristicas
- Discotechque, bitches! Help and the one in Copacabana are some of the hottest. Hey, when in Rio…
- We spent 3 hours at the Girl from Ipanema bar, and they never played the song. For that matter we didn’t hear “Copacabana” at our hotel either…
- 5 minutes means 25 minutes no matter what.
- Even though few people speak English, they all listen to American and UK music. Plus, their radio stations are better than ours!
- Fejoada, a traditional Brazilian family dish, is damn tasty. Black beans, some type of awesome beef, rice all mixed up. Perfect dish for the rainy-ass days we had!
- ‘Big Jeezy’, aka Christ the Redeemer – No one would ever get a picture like we did, only one in existence. John got mad for the first time.
OK, of course I’m no Charlie Gibson, but hopefully gives ya a little front line on the hottest spot South of Havana.
