Rio de Janeiro Day 3

Today we ventured into the historic center of Rio. Rio used to be the former capital of Brazil before it moved to Brasilia. Despite staying in the "center" of town starting tomorrow, we are actually closer to a lot of the sights from Botafogo. We took the scenic route walking along the beach of Botafogo and Flamengo. It was so much hotter than we expected when we ran out of shade (and we accidentally forgot sunscreen). The beach was incredibly busy full of locals, tourists, and vendors selling all sorts of things: acai, homemade ice pops, meat kebabs, and corn on the cob. 

About 45 minutes into our walk, Allan was reaching his sunshine threshold. Luckily we were getting closer to the historic center. We started moving in from the coast to head towards the cathedral. We walked past the World War II Memorial, which was guarded, most likely from crazy Carnaval partygoers, and some museums. A lot of buildings in the center like the museums are closed for the festivities. Some are also venues for street parties. When walking past the national library and theater, we stumbled on a fun looking street party just about to get started. We decided to come back after visiting the cathedral. The library and theater were both beautiful buildings, the theater especially. It's a shame that they were closed and we couldn't explored the insides. 

When we arrived at the cathedral, we were surprised by the shape. It reminded me of the cult temple in Brasilia. It's cone-like shape didn't really scream cathedral and if you just walked past it we wouldn't have known it was the cathedral. When we walked up to it, Mass was taking place so we stood in the open doorway like many others to admire the space and listen. Along the four 'sides' of the cathedral were large stained glass windows that almost went floor to ceiling. It was very plain inside except for those windows, but the acoustics with the concrete building, size, and shape, were amazing. The sound of people singing was powerful and you could hear it from at least a block away. 

After our visit to the cathedral, we shared some acai, Allan's obsessed, and headed about 10 minutes down the road to the aqueduct. It was pretty cool to see a tall aqueduct running through the middle of the city. The white arches really stood out. The sightseeing experience was a little tainted by all the drunken street partiers scaling the aqueduct and relieving themselves all over the surrounding area. We certainly weren't in the nicer parts of Rio anymore. We left the aqueduct and went a couple blocks to Escadaria Selarón. The stairs were designed with painted tiles by an artist, Jorge Selarón, who lived nearby and hated how ugly the stairs were. He still regularly painted tiles to replace and add to the stairs until his death in 2013. The stairs were really cool, but again, packed full of drunken Carnaval party people. We walked to the very top of the stairs where it was much quieter, and so Allan could say he walked all of the stairs, and we took some pictures where there weren't as many people. 

We left the stairs and went back towards the theater towards the street party. The sun was going down and the party was in full swing when we arrived. It was busy, but not crazy like some other parties we had seen or heard about. We grabbed a couple of caiprinhas (holy cow the amount of alcohol in those bad boys!) and made our way to the steps of the theater. From here we had a place to sit and watch the party and dance to ourselves without getting tangled in the mess of glittered, mostly naked partying people in the square in front of us. The music was good, and the people watching was too. While we sat and enjoyed our drinks and the atmosphere, talking with each other, a guy next to us started to talk with us in a mixture of spanish and english. I was wearing my llama earrings and he wanted to know if we had been to northern Argentina, where he is from. We told him about our trip, and he told us about northern Argentina and what brought him to Brazil. It was great to talk with him! We decided to share one more caiprinha before we headed back to the hotel. 

The day started off a little bumpy, but it ended on a high.Leggi altro