May 23-June 1, 2010
Another business trip that allowed me to venture out and see a place I had not been to before. I started off in Campinas and Sao Paulo arriving on a Monday morning and heading straight to work. After the 18 hours of flying and layovers to get there that wasn't the best way to start the day, but I would have had to leave Seattle on Saturday afternoon to get to Brazil on Sunday so I decided to give it a shot.
There weren't too many picture opportunities in either Campinas and Sao Paulo, but I can think of a couple of things I might have captured had I had a smaller camera (see GF1 entry above).
However, that all changed when I got to Rio de Janeiro. What a great place. I was there at the end of summer so it wasn't as crowded as I am sure it gets at the height of summer. My hotel was about a block from Ipanema Beach. I took a city tour on Saturday that went to all the regular spots you should see in Rio and I would highly recommend doing it. The one I did was called All Day in Rio. We went to the Christo Redemptor statue on a high hill overlooking Rio. Unfortunately, when I was there the statue had scaffolding surrounding it. I guess they have to clean it up once in a while. We also went to the top of Sugarloaf, an enormous rock outcropping that provided tremendous views of the city and beaches. The other very interesting stop was the Sambadrome Marquês de Sapucaí or simply Sambadrome. It is a purpose-built parade area in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where samba schools parade competitively each year during Carnival. When you see Carnival on TV you are seeing the Sambadrome.
One of the funnier things that happened was having to have a translator to translate the English the tour guide was speaking. She spoke good enough English, but with a very heavy accent. Harry, a Swiss guy I met on the tour, had been in Brazil for six months and had gotten used to the Portuguese accent and apparently saw the look of confusion on my face so he translated for me most of the day. It was hilarious.
There was a lagoon that has a 7.5km walking/bike path around it very near the hotel so I was able to get out and get a bit of exercise (not always easy on these trips). I was about halfway around on Sunday morning and was getting thirsty so I stopped and got a coconut. I had not drunk coconut juice straight out of the coconut before. It was pretty tasty.
The food was great and the weather was incredible.
