I know it’s been awhile since our last Thanksgiving post, so I’m playing a bit of catchup here…
We left Ihla Grande and made our way back to the mainland and towards Rio for our last day before leaving Brazil. A boat and bus ride later we were checking into a hostel and planning out our last day in Rio. After a lunch stop at a cute café around the corner (the highlight of which was my iced mate), we decided to start with a visit to the Santa Teresa neighborhood we’d failed to reach on our first go-round. This time we did a bit more advance planning and found the right series of buses to take us up into the hillside.
Well worth the trip, we wandered winding streets crowded with aging but beautiful buildings, apparently once inhabited by the city’s elite. Now it seems a little artsy and bohemian and lots of fun to explore. We wandered by a few kids hanging out on their rooftop flying kites, and even found the local workout station and celebrated with a few pull-ups with a view of the bay. The local church was party central – even the priest was dancing up a storm.
Trying to find a restaurant that had been recommended by a friend of Wolf’s, we accidentally almost crashed a wedding – thinking we had made it to the right place we wandered in, only to be asked by the security guards whether we were guests before they escorted us out… it’s probably a good thing since the place (called Solar Real) was gorgeous with ridiculous views over the city. We might have decided to move our wedding :) Around the corner we found our destination, Aprazivel, and after thoroughly confusing the staff by telling them we just wanted to stay for a beer, we sat down to enjoy our last Rio panoramic.
Afterwards we walked down the hill towards the Lapa neighborhood for the Saturday night street party we’d planned to check out.
We arrived in the Lapa neighborhood and wandered around the street carts and performers for a while before wandering through the rest of the neighborhood and eventually finding the metro and our way home. After a tough last night in Rio (the hostel plumbing was strangely loud) we caught an early ride to the airport, destined for Chile once again…
world by westy 