Rio, the Cathedral, city tour, Sugar Loaf and the Samba Show!
Following Corcovado and the spectacular Christ the Redeemer we embarked on a guided city tour taking in ‘downtown’ and the shopping district. We stopped of at Rio’s Cathedral. To say this building is a little unsual is putting it mildly! When I think of Cathedrals I think of elaborate architecture, gargoyles, peaks, steeples, stained glass, wooden pews, musty old smells, frescoes, gold leaf, wood panelling, that kinda thing. You too right? Well, Rio’s cathedral has the stained glass – lots of it – however it’s worlds away from the rest. Here it is:
Crazy huh? And yes, that really is 70’s style grey concrete. I have to say when we saw it I was certainly shocked. All of those wee slats are open holes in the side – there is no glass. They are designed so air can get in but and birds rain can’t. Inside however it’s very unusual (see below) and quite pretty.
Your eyes are drawn by the 4 panels of coloured stained glass – each one a different colour – to the white cross at the roof. It is very unusual and quite stunning in a non traditional way. I haven’t quite made up my mind on it though, it’s such a departure from the norm and all that horrible grey and aged concrete takes a lot of getting past… Anyway. Its worth seeing, it’s a product of its times, designed innovatively to house thousands at a time when funds were short and a bigger space was needed.
We also visited the stadium where the official Carnival is held and had a laugh trying on some of the mental costumes. How they dance in these is beyond me – they’re so heavy!
<img Onto Sugar Loaf. It’s a massive piece of rock which has erupted out of the sea. It’s accessible by land (you can go up a windy steep path or, alternatively climb the rock face) however the most direct route up – and the one we took – is via a scary looking cable car over a gap of a few hundred metres (if that) of sea. It’s well worth the trip as once up there you are afforded fantastic panoramic views of Rio and the surrounding countryside. It’s called sugar loaf as it’s the shape of a loaf of sugar from the days of the early settlers in Brazil. The sugar at the time was unrefined, wet and sticky and had to be set into ‘loafs’ it was set then sat up on a shelf where it took a few days to dry out before it was sold on. The mountain resembles one of these hence the name – I think that’s a pretty cool story!
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As Stevo isn’t very good with heights so the journey up and over was a bit traumatic for him (poor wee thing) as the cable car is a wee bit shaky and goes quite high. However it zips up there pretty quickly. On top there shops, wooded walkways (with cute teeny monkey) and wonderfully, a mountain top bar selling cool beer which was a godsend as it was a very hot and sticky day. Sitting atop the Loaf beer in hand, surrounded by views of the sparkly blue sea, the brillaint white beaches of Ipanema and Copacabanna, with Christ Redeemer on one distant hill, the Favellas on another was just bloody marvellous!
We had booked a Samba show at night to experience a wee taste of the festival atmosphere and glamour. The package included a meal at a traditional Brazilian Steakhouse. You go in and there are wee cards on your table, you set it to green if you want more meat and turn it to red if you’re stuffed. The waiters come around with lots of differing meaty temptations, steak, pork, chicken, sausage, chicken hearts (yuk – they love these in Brazil). There was also a buffet with fish, cheese, salad and veg. It was the kinda place where you never got a table to yourself and having been picked up in a coach and subjected to 20 mins of this loud American guy and his inane chat about hard drives (c’mon…) we were dreading getting sat next to them however we lucked out and got sat next to this lovely young Scottish couple Dave and Jackey from Glasgow and Elgan respectively. I’m not sure whether it was the company or the fact that Jackey was a dietician however we never at that much! Certainly not as much as we had been which is probably a good thing!
We then went onto the Samba Soy – and it really was spectacular – a riot of colour and movement telling the story of the first native Indian Brazilians, the arrival of the Spaniards, the Spanish /French land fight, the importing of the slaves and the organic growth of the fantastic music inspired from the myriad cultures. We took some fantastic photos – see below. The guys and their fight dancing were a sigh to behold. So springy and bendy and fast! The evening culminated with Stevo and Dave on the stage signing, bizzarely, my Bonnie lies over the ocean! I think it was meant to be a British song however the English lads refused to get onstage – no stopping us Scots though! We also met a Jamacian guy (also on stage for No Woman No Crime) who even more strangely is a country and western singer in American and was rather frantic about us googling him (which we did, Dean Crawford if you are interested haha)!!
Dave and Jackey wanted to stop off for a beer post show and ordinarily we would’ve but not that night as due to a cancellation we had lost one day of our hols in Rio and had been moved onto an early flight the very next day L. Onto Cuba tomorrow via the Pananma Canal!
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