Rio: Copacabana!

Today was a pretty good day.... if you can call being driven around RIO DE JANIERO and seeing the waves of the COPACABANA and IPANEMA simply a "good" thing.

We started off the day by visiting the local "hippie market", essentially a craft fair on the streets of large proportions. Apparently it used to have something to do with hippies,... but no longer. I replaced the pair of sandals I lost in Salvador with a new one and picked up a few more trinkets for the folks back home. I also stopped to talk to and play checkers with some of the vendors; it was a bit harder because the rules are a little different. You can only move forward, but you can jump backwards. When you are "kinged," the king can move any number of spaces and can jump pieces along its diagonal at any distance. They were really fun guys, and I have a video of one of them offering a live pigeon that he had just picked up, suggesting that we could eat it, and then Hilary reacting as you'd expect some to react with a "no!!!".... good times.

After returning from the Hippie market, we were dropped back at the hotel where I mailed my postcards at last. Hopefully they'll arrive home before I do. We ate at a local supermarket that had a "pizzeria" restaurant in the back; I had a Calzone that included a lot of ricotta cheese, olives, peppers, tomato sauce and pieces of hard boiled egg! I'd never had one quite like it; I don't think they have pepperoni of any form, since hotdogs pass for "sausage" everywhere I've seen.

We performed at the Candelaria cathedral in Rio, an amazing place. We got there a little early and toured the cathedral of St. Sebastian, a giant cone-shaped building with massive paned stained glass on each of its 4 sides. Granite floors and an amazing structure... I took a lot of pictures! Our concert was well attended, and apparently recorded for a Brazilian television station! We won't get the recording for 6 months or so, since they want to edit it for broadcast and such, and we have to give them copies of our passports as a waiver of any rights to it, naturally. Still... it was a great performance on our part; all of the songs were right-on in a way that doesn't usually happen with all songs at once.

Afterwards, we ate at a local cafe; I had a lasagna dish and a milkshake that was really good, as good or better than Fuddruckers and for less dough. A Cuban athletic team came in while we were eating; Nan got some pictures with them, some with my camera.... I wish I'd had the chance to see some of the Pan-American games with them being in town, but I'll have to be satisfied with having heard the very loud music from their closing celebration echoing through the streets.

In the course of the day, I had opportunity to walk along some of the famed Copacabana beach and take some pictures, including one of the Copacabana name scratched into the beach sand (by moi). Tomorrow, we're going to go see the huge status of Jesus up on the nearby mountain, it's gotten a lot of international publicity [including a place in the revised "Seven Wonders" list]. We'll also go up the Sugarloaf, a local hill that forms a very sharp silhouette on the nearby skyline. It should make for some amazing pictures of the city. The waves on the copacabana are also huge, nearly 6+ feet ... I'll be looking for bodyboards and for parasailing opportunities.

So many things, so little time!