Sorry, I'm Retired

Sorry for the delay in posting to the blog, but we're having so much fun in Rio that I haven't had time to write. I'm going to post as much as I can about our Rio experience; it might take some time to capture it all, but I promise it is forthcoming.

The first day of our vacation involved flying to Rio through Miami International Airport. The 6 a.m. flight from Pittsburgh to Miami was fine (thank you to Andrew, our son-in-law who took us to the airport at 3 a.m.). We arrived in Miami just before 9, and had a 14 hour layover. That's right - 14 hours. I don't know if they keep track of such things, but that might be a record. Anyway, it seems when you're flying and are making a tight connection, it never fails that when you arrive, you learn that your connecting flight is way on the other end of the airport, maybe even in a different terminal. Well, when we deplaned, we had a comfortable 14 hours to make our way to our connecting gate, so plenty of time, no need to rush. But wouldn't you know, it turned out that the connecting flight was only 3 gates down from where we arrived. And this for an international flight, which is usually in a different terminal. So we took our time and ambled on down to Gate 14 with needless to say, plenty of time to spare. When we arrived at our gate, we were thinking, okay, now what are we going to do for the next 13 hours and 55 minutes?

And so we spent our first day of vacation at the Miami airport. We slept, we ate, we read, we slept...rinse, repeat. We did have a few things to break up the day and pass the time. Some airport officials were training drug-sniffing dogs, and they came around and sniffed our bags a few times. Even though I know I'm not traveling with any contraband, I still find myself breathing a sigh of relief when the dogs move on after sniffing my bag. I mean, mistakes could be made, couldn't they? Also, since we dropped cable tv a few months ago and signed up for YouTubeTV, and I had my laptop with me, we booted it up, signed into our account, and watched a couple of television programs. While we were at the International Airport in Miami, we actually felt like we were already in South America. Most people in the airport, including employees of the various restaurants and shops as well as fellow tourists, spoke Spanish; we heard very little English. After a fun day at the Miami airport (sarcasm detected!), we finally boarded our plane to Rio at 11 p.m.

The flight to Rio was just over 8 hours. When we travel we always get opposing aisle seats, so we can have more leg room. Joe's two seat mates were Luiza and Isaiah (not traveling together). Luiza was born and raised in Rio, but now lives in Germany. She was heading to Rio for business. She gave Joe a lot of interesting ideas as far as places to go and things to see in Rio and also told him about some good restaurants. Isaiah was a different character. He lives in Boise, Idaho and is 30 years old. When Joe asked him what he does for a living, he said he's retired. Joe asked how he could be retired at 30, and he said he won the lottery - twice. So his lottery winnings were $10,000 the first time, and $350,000 the second time. When Joe informed him that that amount would not last the rest of his life, and asked what he planned to do when the money ran out, he said he plans to win the mega-millions. And then he asked Joe if he would be his financial advisor, to which Joe replied, "Sorry, I'm retired."

We arrived safely in Rio. After going through customs (which was a very easy process) and meeting up with our driver, we finally got a chance to see some of the great city of Rio de Janeiro along the way to the hotel. This city is stunning in its beauty. In some ways, it's like Pittsburgh: you go through tunnels through the mountains to burst upon an amazing cityscape of urban development against the mountains beside the sea. Similar to Pittsburgh, except for that part about being beside the sea. In Pittsburgh, it would be beside the river.

Since we arrived at our hotel just before 11:00 a.m., our hotel room was not ready. Since we hadn't eaten yet (breakfast or lunch, since breakfast served on the plane consisted of yogurt, granola, and a fig newton), we went to a little restaurant next door to the hotel called Las Brutas. There we enjoyed a delicious meal. Then we returned to the hotel. We originally thought we'd spend Saturday afternoon on the beach, which is right across the street from our hotel, but since our room wasn't ready, and we were still in the clothes we had been wearing during travel for the last day and a half, we decided to just hang out in the lobby and wait for our room - although I did take a short walk on the beach before I went back to the hotel lobby. As we sat in the lobby, we slept, read, slept some more...rinse, repeat. Our room was ready around 2:30, and we planned to go to Mass at 5:00, so we decided that except for my brief walk to the beach, a longer beach visit could wait.  

Copacabana Beach

We went to Mass at a nearby church, and the service was in Portuguese. The singing was beautiful. The church had some really nice pictures of the Stations of the Cross along one wall, and a grotto was situated right outside some glass doors to the left of the altar. I always like going to different churches and we enjoyed our Portuguese Mass.

After Mass we headed back to the hotel, with a quick stop at a supermarket to pick up some bottled water. We were told not to drink tap water in Rio, hence the supermarket stop. In the U.S., buying bottled water is relatively easy. The biggest decision is whether to buy Dasani, Deer Park, or the Costco brand. Here you have to decide between still or sparkling. Since I very strongly dislike sparkling water, it was important to me to buy still water. However, we couldn't figure out which was which. Some bottles said "con gas" and others said "sem gas". So now to figure out whether con meant with and sem meant without, or the other way around. You would think that con, since it means anti or against, would be the one without gas (against gas?). But we couldn't be sure; should we go with this logic? We even shook up some bottles to see if they would fizz, figuring that the carbonated water would fizz while the still water would not. But there seemed to be no difference in the fizz factor between the two. After awhile a fellow shopper was passing down the aisle, and Joe asked him if he spoke English. Fortunately he did, and in answer to Joe's question, he told us that "sem gas" was the still, non-carbonated water. Good thing we didn't use the logical approach. Thank you Mr. Shopper who spoke English. After that it was back to the hotel and in bed by 8:00 to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Thanks to Joe for his contributions to this post. The interesting parts are his; the mistakes are mine!