A Different Kind of Skyline

Contemplating the view of Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountains) and Guanabara Bay where the Botofogo and Flamengo beaches are.

Day 7? 16? 45?: Buzios

Who keeps track of days after the first one or two anyway? By this time I knew it was after new years, but couldn't ever remember what day/date of the week it was. But that's a good marker for a vacation.

We took another small trip the second week, this time to Ararauama, Cabo Frio and Buzios. We didn't have as much luck with the weather. It wasn't ever terrible, but not nice enough for us to go to the beach - to my disappointment. But we had a nice couple of days walking around the towns. Buzios was nice, and we had a good time shopping and eating and enjoying the scenery.


A nice pic of Felipe and I by the water. Starting to tan, aren't we? ;)


The whole gang, minus Primitivo who's taking the photo.


Gotta capture those awesome shots...they're not gonna make it on my camera by themselves.


You can see it was a lot overcast, but still nice to see all of the colorful boats bobbing in the water. This one is 100% Buziano! (I'm not sure what that means...)


Cute mosaics in the sidewalk.






A nice photo of Felipe and his dad at dinner in Cabo Frio. Primitivo was happy to be spending time with his son, and Felipe was happy to be spending time with his dad (he was happy as well about the all you can eat pizza he was having for dinner too...)

I'd love to go back in nicer weather. The beaches were so wide and amazing looking. It just wasn't meant to be on this trip. Actually, you could get me to go back to Buzios anytime, as long as I could find that street vendor who had the best ever cocada that I tasted while I was there. A cocada is this supremely yummy coconut and condensed milk treat...something I plan on leaning how to make and perfect so that I can feed my newly acquired cocada habit without having to go all the way to the southern hemisphere. Just to give you an idea, this woman looks like she makes a very very delicious cocada. I would have taken a pic of mine to post...but I was too busy eating!

Behind, so very far behind!

Okay, I know - I'm very far behind in my posts...I have a bunch of photos from our trip to Rio to post! But somehow I've been tied up...I think it's because I got back into my family history project and that has taken up most of my free computer time at home.

Anyway, to tide you over (and to let you know I'm still alive and planning on posting!) here is an awesome find I came across today:

I found this Fantastic Mr. Fox coat on Etsy, and really wish I were a kid, or had a kid I could give it to. How cool is that!

Well, just letting you know I'm still around and will be posting more Rio photos soon! Don't go away...

Greetings from (sometimes) Sunny Rio de Janeiro!

At Leme beach, looking towards Copacabana.

Well everyone, it's been a busy week here - explaining the lack of posts, and we're on our last full day of Rio. I'm sad to think we'll be leaving tomorrow, especially since we'll be going back to winter! I'm posting this photo I took along the beach in Rio on Wednesday afternoon to tide you over...I may not make any full posts until we get back to NYC (our remaining time here is precious!).

Ana and Sergi have left just now to fly to São Paulo for a couple of days, and so things are winding down. I hope they have safe travels, and that everything goes smoothly for us as well when we leave tomorrow night.

Happy Birthday....

Today would have been Dad's 64th birthday - I hope he's up there rockin' with Elvis ;)

Happy New Year 2011!

We had a terrific New Year's Eve! We all had dinner at Ernani's house (a family friend) in Copacabana. We were there for a while eating and dancing before heading over to the beach.

Me and my brother in law Sergi dancing Samba, tons of fun and very tiring on the legs!

After dancing, at about 11:00pm we walked the two blocks from Ernani's apartment to Copacabana Beach - what craziness! There will thousands of people on any given street and when we got to the beach, and were met by 4 million other people, well let me tell you - that was a sight I never thought I'd see! The Beach stretches for about 6km, so thankfully everyone had plenty of space to stand.


They had 4 live music stages, and screens set up all over the place. At 10 seconds to midnight they put the countdown up and everyone started screaming. At midnight all the lights on the beach went out and the fireworks started. 20 different boats set of 25 tons of fireworks for the first 20 minutes of the new year. it was an AMAZING sight. Everyone was cheering and happy, and colored by the sparkling fireworks in the sky. I couldn't have imagined what it would feel like to be surrounded by 4 million revelers, but it was really something out of this world.


Here is a picture of the crowd last night. If you look at the middle left of the photo, you will see a big white screen...we were about a hundred feet to the right of that - can you see us? ;)

We stayed on the beach until about 1:30am and then walked back to Ernani's apartment where we waited a bit longer for the crowds to clear out (although I'm not sure that actually happened - they seemed just as many when we left at 2:30am). By the end of the night we were wiped out, but happy.

Happy New Year to all - I wish you the best of happiness and health in 2011!