Week 30: Rio de Janeiro

NOTE: At the beginning of the year the exchange rate was closer to $4R:$1US. At this time, it was closer to $3R:$1US. Darn 😑

Monday, 8/8
It was a pretty good Monday around the city. We spent a majority of the day wandering around the center and checking out a cathedral and the cultural museum. 

The Olympic flame was also here in this area!

The Cultural museum had a wonderful selection of art borrowed from a few museums in France!

I obviously loved it!

Tuesday, 8/9

Today was the long awaited beach volleyball day!! Our tickets were $50R each for 4 whole games! 

Along with hanging out on the beach before we went to the volleyball games, we spent the morning walking around the beach area.

The games lasted all afternoon and into the evening. We saw the Brazilian women play and win against the US women but it was the most exciting of the four matches. 

Wednesday, 8/10

Today, we had tickets to sailing! Neither of us had really been into sailing but we decided to give it a try since the tickets were only $40R each for a whole afternoon of fun and adventure.

It was a cloudy rainy day, but we left the apartment early to wander about in that specific Olympic area. (All of the events and arenas were pretty spread out across the city so we got to see a whole lot of Rio!)

Obviously, we spent that morning at the museum there and spent some time in the park before walking over to the sailing area.

We sat on the beach for a while before heading in to the sailing area.

I’m not going to lie – it was awesome! They had a screen set up and a whole area to sit and chill on the sand or just stand and watch the competitions. The screens really gave us a better understanding of the competition and we could see the boats right next to where we were sitting.

Sadly, it started raining and after waiting for a long while we decided to leave since they had continuously delayed the race due to weather.

We grabbed some coffee and them headed back to the apartment to warm up.

^^ At first, we thought this was a rabbit unicorn fish thing that deserved recognition… turns out it’s not. 😂

Thursday, 8/11

It was finally our time to move out of the apartment with no kitchen – it hurt my soul that we couldn’t cook.

Gladly, our host offered her own apartment for a few nights which was AWESOME. We finally got to cook some microwave lasagna for lunch that was delicious! 

Theeen, *eeek* Luke agreed to go to the ballet at the famous Municipial theatre of Rio de Janeiro. 

It was a.w.e.s.o.m.e.

We got all cute and dressed up, somehow looked young enough to automatically get student I.D. discounts ($76R total) and went to watch the beautiful ballet! By the way, no one should tell you you can’t get cute as a backpacker.

The ballet had an Amazonian theme with a live orchestra and was so fun to watch!

Afterwards, we went home to eat some microwave burgers, read, and went to bed.

Friday, 8/12

Yay! Another free night at our apartment aaand we also had tickets to Athletics at the competition. 

It’s essentially an all morning/afternoon thing so we prepared to stay at the stadium all day.

So we’re sitting there, hanging out, and watching all of the competitors/competitions and then some ladies start screaming in the rows above us.

Next thing we know, we see William – like the William we met in Manaus and then met up with in Medellin and then ran into accidentally in Santa Marta – I mean, obviously, fate has stepped in countless times to connect us together.

So we end up catching up with him and watching the races (like the 10,000m race won by an African woman who set the world record) and then we decided to meet up with him over the next few days before we leave Rio.

He leaves; we watch the rest of the games like the high jump. 

Then we get out of there and go back to the hostel. There’s literally no one there so we go get a bottle of wine and make some spaghetti – which turned out amazing by the way (BTW dinner parties will ensue when we’re/I’m back in the States).

After a delicious dinner and another round of Olympic swimming and gymnastics watching on our awesome TV, we go to bed.

Saturday, 8/13

So we planned on meeting up with William today – then saw that the weather was perfect and sailing was still $40R so we thought we’d go there instead. He decided to join us so we spent the morning getting to the stadium and buying tickets.

We spent most of that time talking, catching up, and watching the sailing competition. It really was a spectacular afternoon hanging out!

We split up for dinner but ended up meeting back up later that night where we went to a bar, had a few beers, and talked the night away.

Luke and I don’t stay out super late too often, but we decided that our friend William was worth the sacrifice.

It was a great day.

^^ Such a great bromance 😭😭

Sunday, 8/14

We spent half the day debating on if this should be our last day in Rio mainly because we didn’t know if we would ever see Will, or Rio, ever again.

We packed and spent the morning and afternoon hanging outside the Beach Volleyball arena, hanging out on the beach eating the oh-so-expensive Pringles that William thoughtfully brought.

Unfortunately, he had to go to another event and we had to get on our bus to Paraty. Sadly, we said our goodbyes, picked up our bags, and headed out of Rio. 

We got on the bus and headed to Paraty.

Once we got there, the adventure didn’t end. We met a few guys from Argentina who needed a place to stay so we decided to share a taxi ride to the hostel (we were going to walk, but since we found someone we could share with – we took that option.)

Finally, after getting to our hostel, we got settled in and went to bed around 1:00am.

#sadness