Welcome to Rio!!!

We rolled into town before the sky turned colors. We were nearly delirious, and we were laughing in no time. Soon my stomach hurt from laughing. Into a cab and off into the city we went! Our bus arrived on the north-east side of town. We headed south over a bridge that extruded from a fissure of great rocks. The city sprawled out into many directions. The city was waking up and I felt truly fortunate to be bustling right along with it. We came down off the bridge and into tight, colorful streets. We were still laughing about everything, and the cab driver didn't seem to care one way or another.

After the cab driver was done looping around the same street twice, and after asking some old men where our hostel was, we arrived to our new home, Rio Hostel. It over looks down town Rio. When we got up to the lobby and checked in, the sun was expressing a touch of a pink on one top corner of one of the buildings. It slowly faded into orange and other sides began to glimmer in a vertical progression.

We were not tired and we went out into the still waking city of Rio de Janeiro. We walked down into the Lapa neighborhood. There was a market that was just opening up on a side street, which we happily meandered down. The colors were all we were interested in at the moment. All we cared to spend money on was coffee and a little bite to eat, and this we found soon after wondering out of the other end of the market. There was a cafe that we have called the Sexy Corner Cafe. We sat there and had our coffee, fried eggs, and ham croissant. We played backgammon for a long time with plenty of people watching to be had by all. There was no chance to be tired yet, and we got on a bus and headed to Copacabana beach. The drive over was amazing: passing through tunnels, next to a marina where I would like to have a sail boat next to all the other sail boats some day, past parks and beautiful old buildings with crumbling facades, all the while curving towards our destination.

Once off the bus, we found a larger market there in Copacabana with more colors and varieties of fruits and veggies, more meats, fish, shrimp, etc. Flowers too. We knew we would be back through to buy dinner before we headed back to the hostel. For the beach, someone convinced me to buying a bag of strawberries and Josh got something new to the both of us. Delicious. Towards the end of the market we could see the beach.

Once next to the beach we had a good long walk on what I will call the board walk. We found some 'deep shade' as Josh called it. There was a well sized plot of palm trees for us to take shade. We took off our shoes and socks before stepping onto the beach, of course. It should be against the law to walk on a sandy beach with shoes and socks on. A blanket was laid out in the shade, and I took a disco nap. Neither of us slept long, because the sun came around. We moved a bit deeper into the shade and played more backgammon. We both bought a Brazilian flag sheets which we have been using as our towels ever since.

Back into the market once it was time to get going. We bought shrimp, limes, parsley, salad yummies(radishes, a variety of lettuces,etc), herbs, and avocados. We got back on the bus, and then made our way to a local grocery in Lapa. There we bought rice, oil, salt, sugar, water, and cachasa, which is the booze to put in caporinas.

Once home, I realized there's a pool at our hostel. So I got into after soaking up some sun on the front balcony, overlooking downtown and the trolley line below. The pool was small and welcomed by yours truly. Shower. Josh was already getting things ready. He has a great kitchen sense. He loves cooking, and this is a good trait. Something new I learned from him in this meal is that cooking garlic with all the shrimp heads and shells helps make the sauce very creamy and delicious. You can also save the heads and shells for a snack after wards. Sounds kinda weird, but once again, very delicious. I will follow these lessons when cooking shrimp from now on. Thanks Josh!

The salad was fantastic with as was the shrimp and rice combo! We shared the salad and rice with our new friend, Ash. He is from England, living in Liverpool now, and he has never eaten meat in his life. Big wow. He and his parents are Hindi and that is just the way he was raised. More shrimp for us. Delicious....

We stayed in the hostel and drank some beers and caporinas that we made. Then we made our way up to the hostel bar next to the pool and hung with a couple other hostel goers and the bar tender, Emily, who Josh has had a crush on all week. Stayed up late until it was really time to sleep. We still hadn't had more than an a cumulative hour of sleep in over a day between the two of us. Big snore.