Last week we decided that we should take advantage of our incredible time in Brazil by heading over to Rio De Janeiro. We took the overnight bus which was very comfortable and overall a great way to travel.
Of course we had some adventures along the way. For starters we showed up at the bus station at 11:30 pm thinking that our bus was leaving at 11:50. It was in fact leaving at 11:30 so we just barely made the bus. Then we were sleeping on the bus when we reached what we thought was our second bathroom stop. Michelle got off the bus to go use the restroom while I stayed back to sleep. When she headed back for the bus she ended up getting on the wrong bus. Luckily she realized this right away and got on the right one where she found me frantically packing up our belongings. This because the bus driver had just tapped me on the shoulder and told me we were at our final destination so I would have to get off the bus. At this point we were both dazed so we walked around for a bit trying to regain consciounsness. Apparently it did not work. I went to buy our return tickets in attempt to be prepared so that we would not end up stuck in Rio on Friday when we were to leave. Of course I bought tickets to wrong city which I did not realize until much later when I was actually conscious. We then headed for our hotel. Ahh, how nice it would be to get to our lovely hotel which was called... You guessed it, we had no idea what it was called. We forgot to write that little morsel of information down. Michelle though was 100% sure that it was the Olinda Copacabana Hotel. So we headed out in a taxi. The driver did as he was told and took us to the Olinda. Of course that was not our hotel but the nice people there helped us look through a tour book at all the hotels starting with an "O" (we knew that much at least). We eventually found the Orla Copacabana Hotel and we were set. Then the rain started.
The rain really wasn't so bad. W e still had a really great time in spite of the bad weather. The pictures weren't as good as they could have been but there is more to trips than just the pictures. We did get to go see the statue of Christ on Corcovado mountain. That was really neat to see. Of course we could not see much from up there because it was quite cloudy and we were above the clouds. Still it was a breathtaking view to be above the clouds looking down.
It was really amazing being up there. I should mention that we did have some more adventure on the tour. We were all set up for a 9:00 a.m. tour to Corcovado but the tour guide took us to Sugar Loaf mountain (another of the icons of Rio) instead and to add insult to injury he forgot us and we ended up separated front he group while they went up on the cable car. The picture below is actually our tour leaving us. The good news was that we really didn't want to got to Sugar Loaf so this gave us the opportunity to go check with the tour company about our real tour to the statue. It all worked out just fine in the end..
After we left the Christ statue we did a short tour of the city which included Maracana stadium which is one of the largest soccer stadiums in the world holding 100,000 people seated. I did not get any really good pictures of it but I found some on the internet. It is a pretty amazing thing to imagine that many people at on place screaming as they watch their team.
After that we headed for the cathedral which was not much to look at from outside but it was beautiful from the inside. We got a few nice pictures of the stain glass and the saints.
When our tour finished on Friday we headed to the bus station after a little snack. We decided to go ahead and take the bus to Sao Paulo even though we really wanted to go to Campinas where my parents live. We figured we had already bought the tickets and we could still make it home from Sao Paulo it would just add about 1 1/2 hours to the trip. The bus this time was really nice. We got little pillows, blankets, snacks, water, and of course coffee. It was another enjoyably bus trip.
We made it back home to Mom & Dad's without further incident. We are now preparing ourselves for the goodbyes that we know are coming soon. It has been a great time!
