Rio Post #3: The City of Rio de Janeiro

Here's a quick review/preview of my series on the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio:
Rio Post #1: Women's Gymnastics Individual All-Around
Rio Post #2: Qualifying Stages and Specialized Events
Rio Post #3: The City of Rio de Janeiro
Rio Post #4: Saturday Night at the Blue Oval
Rio Post #5: Party on the Beach

I'm returning to Rio someday.  What a beautiful and amazing city.  I was expecting a total hell-hole and instead I was blown away.  Part of the reasons for my misguided expectations was that the American media did its best to scare people away from Rio.  In casual conversations I had with people, they would light-heartedly warn me to not get Zeka, drink the water, go swimming in the ocean, visit the flavelas, or stay out drinking until 5 in the morning causing me to stop a gas station and piss all over the place.  If one watched the news in the US (or European countries), they probably thought that by going to Rio they would end up robbed and with some 18th, 19th, 20th, and/or 21st-century disease.  This article from CBSsports.com does a great job of scaring the crap out of people and making it sound like the Olympics in Rio would be a disaster.  Though Rio and Brazil definitely has its problems, I felt safe from threats seen and unseen the whole time.  More significantly, when we experienced the city, there was something around the corner or on top of a mountain inspiring a new sense of wonderment.. 



The Beaches
Rio is famous for its beaches, particularly Copacabana and Ipanema.

Copacabana was a block from where we stayed and the location of the beach volleyball and several of NBC's sets.

The sense of wonderment...A view of Copacabana Beach from above. That colorful building in the middle is the beach volleyball arena

Copacabana is a huge beach. The sand is great.  I wish we would have spent more time on it.

This is Ipanema Beach. It's more of the locals beach than Copacabana.

This is winter in Brazil...

They are expert sand castle builders in the Brazil.

We walked along the beach many times, but we never took an afternoon and laid out because we were always on the go.  In retrospect, that's a big bummer.  That's one of the reasons I'm going back, so that I can spend a few days on the beach...


Christ Redeemer

Besides the beaches, the Christ Redeemer is Rio's other defining characteristic.  It is one of the "New Seven Wonders of the World" and according to that website "This statue of Jesus stands some 38 meters tall, atop the Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Designed by Brazilian Heitor da Silva Costa and created by French sculptor Paul Landowski, it is one of the world’s best-known monuments. The statue took five years to construct and was inaugurated on October 12, 1931. It has become a symbol of the city and of the warmth of the Brazilian people, who receive visitors with open arms."

To get to the top, we took a van which conveniently left from location close to our apartment.  The road up and down the mountain was interesting.  It seemed like it was a one lane road, yet there was somehow room for two lanes of maniacal drivers, taxis parked off to the side, and bicyclists, joggers, and walkers.  As recommended we went early to avoid the crowds but even then, there were lots of people at the top. None of these pictures capture it, but there were throngs of people.

 

It's a huge statue on steep mountain.

Reverence and sacredness was not the mood at the base of the statue.

Jesus and Brazilians welcomed us to Rio.

There were also great views.

Jesus is a Hawkeye fan.  As I said, reverence and sacredness did not make it to the top of the mountain.  I think there may have been a PokemonGo stop or whatever at the top, too.

What a view.  I said it was a beautiful and amazing city.

Sugar Loaf
Christ Redeemer is more famous, but Sugar Loaf provides even more amazing views. To get to Sugar Loaf, visitors take a cable car to the top of a shorter intermediate mountain and then another cable car to the top of Sugar Loaf.  I think we all preferred Sugar Loaf because it was less crowded, strategically designed to maximize the number of people who could get great views, had a well-marked nature trail through the trees, and most importantly, a bar!  If we'd had more time, getting a drink at the bar with these views would have been awesome!

I hope those cables don't break...

The bay

Copacabana is to my left. Judging by the white t-shirt, I must have been tired that morning even though I had a great nap at diving the day before...

A sharp pic of Garv and LG

A sharp pic of Jill and Nick

Paul taking a selfie! I love this pic! It's so meta...

 
Airbnb Apartment
Adding to the awesome experience was that we stayed at an amazing apartment a few blocks from the beach. The owners left Rio for the weekend to escape the crowds and make a little extra money.  It was three bedrooms and three bathrooms which was perfect for six of us.  It even had a nice view.

Daytime View

Night time view

My "bedroom." It was actually a spare bed in an office.  The husband is a professor. I loved the books as a backdrop.

The living area.  Where's the TV we Americans were wondering? Oh yeah, it's in the office.

 Food and Drink
What would one of my blog posts be if there wasn't a picture of me enjoying a drink characteristic of the region? Or a picture of some food?  One of the oddities of Brazilian food is that for a tropical climate they sure like to eat a lot of meat.  As if they didn't sweat enough in the sweltering heat, they eat massive amounts of meat to add meat sweats to regular sweats.  I actually didn't overeat because I wanted to enjoy myself.  Plus, I was having enough trouble staying awake as it was...

Our first night in Rio, Garv, LG, Paul and I went to a recommended restaurant a block from our apartment.  I started the meal with a caipirinha (cap-a-reen-ya) which is drink made of cachaca (a horrible liquor made of sugarcane), sugar, and muddled fruit.  I found the passion fruit caipirinhas to be the best.

Salud!

Meat. Lots of meat!

On Friday night, we stopped in a trendy neighborhood in Rio to eat at some restaurant that had been recommended to Garv.  Apparently, it had been recommended to everyone else.  Fortunately, we found a cool Mexican restaurant a block or two away.  It was run by a guy who, judging by his English, had definitely spent time in the US and did a great job helping our server serve us.

Caipirinhas for the group! And to celebrate the Giffords arriving!

Tacos!

And of course, we had to go to a Brazilian steakhouse, which exists to give people the meat sweats.  Unfortunately, I was too busy eating or writing down the fourteen different kinds of meat (not exaggerating!) to take any pictures but this one.

Just what you wanted to see.  My disgusting plate of my tenth round of meat.

Today Show
On our last day in Rio (Monday, August 15), Garv, LG, Paul and I went to the Today show which was about a twenty minute walk down the beach.  (The Gifford's, having missed out on a few events, went to a track and field session that morning.)  All the stars of the Today show were there: Matt Lauer, Hoda Kotb, Al Roker, Natalie Morales.  And the morning we were there, many of the Team USA swimmers were there including Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky. If you watched that day, it was probably hard to see me, because we weren't in the front row.  But Paul was tall enough that he could be seen a little bit.  Though I don't watch the Today show, it was pretty cool to see it up close.

The opening of the Today Show

Phelps

Phelps tells Lauer that he won't be swimming at Tokyo in 2020.

Katie Ledecky

Team USA Swimmers

The Today set right behind us

There were lots of these rings around town but the lines to get a pick were usually really long.  But we had no problems getting a picture at 7:30 am.

I took this Tuesday in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.  It's not the Today show but it's Jimmy Roberts and Mike Tirico in Rio where I had been the day before.

Conclusion
I've been told how lucky I am that I got to go the Olympics and when I think about it, I know that I am.  On the one hand, it's as easy as going on Orbitz and Airbnb and whatever website we got the tickets from and making reservations and purchases and getting on a plane and then a taxi and a train and a bus and going through a metal detector and sitting in our seats and watching Simone Biles win the gold medal.  But on the other hand, it seems almost incomprehensibly impossible that a guy who lives in the cornfields of Iowa went to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.   That first day back in the states when I watched the Olympics on TV at DFW and looked at the maps in the back of the airplane magazines and then drove home from Sioux City to Estherville past the cornfields and miles and miles of minimal population density, it hit me how wild it is that I was there.  And when people remind me how lucky I am and I think about going to Rio in that way, I'm grateful and thankful that I have the opportunities to do so many awesome and amazing things, like the Olympics.