The previous post on this series is here..
After a hectic all day tour of Rio which ended in Sugarloaf, we were all tired. After our Europe trip in 2018 when the kids made a new rule that there will be a "rest day" within the trip if we walk more than 6 miles a day for a few days in a row, San had put in a rest day.. Hell, she put in two rest days before we flew out as that was what was available ticket wise..
So we ended up spending Christmas eve and Christmas day in Rio before flying out on 26th morning.
We were told that the city shuts down by 1PM and most places close. We didn't care. Our plan was to go see two more sunsets from the two other popular places in Rio.. the first one was the Arpoador rock, the second one was the Copacabana beach and area.
San had made friends with a lady who worked for the city of Rio on our flight into Brazil from Argentina and she had suggested spending time at a local mall.. eat at a famous Vegan place called Teva..
So we woke up late, took a cab to Teva (we had made reservations) and sat down pretty much as soon as they opened. I ate the pita bread with some side but the family ordered a lot of items and seem to finish everything with relish.. I am allergic to Jackfruit, so had to skip a lot of stuff, but San and the kids said it was mouth watering.
After the lunch, we went to the mall and walked around for a good 2 hours. The stuff there was at least 50% to 100% more expensive than similar stuff in US malls. We also got the location of the mall wrong at first and ended up being dropped somewhere else.. so we walked around the local tiled streets before finally making to the actual mall location. After enough window shopping and having some ice cream there, we wanted to walk to the carnival area near the lagoon.
We never found the right spot and tickets were all sold out anyways. So we decided to just walk along the water front and took an Uber and came back to the Arpoador area. Got a nice vantage point on the rock to watch the sunset and headed back to the Airbnb.
We did get great pictures that evening..
There was a photo by Jr. of the little one taking a photo of me taking a photo of San.. that photo I cannot find..
Here are video clips of our chilling in Rio..
the entire area was cordoned off by cops to local traffic for some reason..
had used this picture as the Happy New Year card for 2024..
It was time to make some pizza and thachchi mummum.. The kids made it after getting all the ingredients from the local supermarket which was still open! We also got stuff to cook for the next day..
Christmas was a laid back day.. we lazed around in the morning and did laundry! Then in the afternoon we decided to visit the Copacabana beach. We were clearly over dressed for this beach as the videos will show. The rain clouds rolled in and there was no way to see the sun set, but we got beautiful family pictures.. and startred walking from there all the way to Ipanema area. It was a long walk and the rains hit before we could walk back. We got cursed by the kids for not taking an uber. We were flying back the next day and wet clothes on the night before was going to be tricky.
Rio is full of tall trees with wide leaves on all the local streets.. Chennai (Madras used to be like this when I was a kid.. not anymore) .. these streets brought back a lot of great memories..
we saw another painted step as we were going from Copacabana to Ipanema.. we stopped by a pastry store to get some stuff to eat as well..
This was my last shot as it started raining all of a sudden..
To date I have not washed and wrung clothes the way I did that evening. They were almost dry by morning and I ironed the collars and waistbands of what was not dry and got them to dry as well.. one of Daddy Narayanan's proudest moments! "There, see... all dry!!" and all I got in return was some eye rolling from the women.
We got to see the Redeemer one last time on our drive to the airport (you really cannot miss this guy from anywhere in Rio!) and took off.. We got to see a beautiful Panama city skyline and had a 3 hour stop over before heading back home.
Jet lag for a +5 hour time difference was interesting to deal with. We have. never been to a place 5 hours ahead till now. It wore off in two days though. The fact that we went on a break before the rest of the folks went on break was a blessing.
On a whole we enjoyed the trip to Argentina and Brazil.. We definitely all agreed that Argentina was more welcoming than Brazil but we did have fun in both places.
Have managed to finally finish blogging about a Christmas trip in early March! That brings me to the next trip..
