Friday, November 27, 2009

Rio- Thursday November 26th

November 27, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving! On our list of things to do today were to head to the Rio Zoo and the Feira Nordestina. The zoo was quite sad, the animals didn’t have big enough spaces and they seemed very warm. They did have a lot of unique native species of monkeys, birds and lizards that were interesting to see.

 

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Feira Nordestina is a huge street fair and market that has food stalls, food markets, local handicrafts and hammocks. It runs Tuesday through Thursday during the day and is apparently very popular on the weekends and runs non stop from 10am Friday until Sunday evening with bands and lots of liquor flowing.

 

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We stopped at one of the stalls for lunch, it was one of the spots that had a lot of people eating at it! Our rule is to never eat in an empty restaurant. We ordered lamb for two and it came with stewed lam meat and veggies, rice, beans and what we think was cassava. It was a huge portion and we barely ate half.

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Full and ready for a nap we headed back to the hotel to relax a bit before heading to our Thanksgiving dinner. We grabbed our books and headed down the pool and enjoyed some sun and even played in the waves in the ocean a bit. Although the water was pretty rough and we kept getting knocked down! Dinner was at 7 so we needed to get going, we showered and grabbed a cab down to the J.W. Marriott in Copacabana where the American Society was putting on a full Thanksgiving dinner for around 125 ex-pats in the area. The evening started with cocktails and passed appetizers on the rooftop bar, it was an amazing view but really hot! An air-conditioned banquet room was calling our name, the spread of Thanksgiving food was amazing. Turkey, ham, stuffing, real cranberry sauce, salads and desserts! My plate was piled super high with a little bit of everything to try, Mike commented that he had never seen me with that much food. I didn’t even eat half of it ;)

 

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We met great people, had good food and really ended up enjoying our evening, four years in a row we have found our International Thanksgiving! I love traveling this time of year and making our own traditions.

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Rio- Wednesday November 25th

November 27, 2009

Further enjoying vacation mode we continued the trend by sleeping in, grabbing breakfast and worked out. I could get used to that ;) We took the hotel shuttled down to Botofogo, one of the neighborhoods and walked around and just enjoyed the city. After walking around and getting quite warm we stopped in a cafe and enjoyed a small snack, cold beverage and fans. With the sun beating down it is pretty darn warm!

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After our stop at the cafe we headed towards the metro station to attempt to find our way towards Copacabana. It is always a difficulty finding what stop to get off at when you don’t speak the language. We got off near Copacabana and grabbed a taxi towards the area where we were heading, there is a street market on Avenue Atlantica that we wanted to hit up to get our souvenirs. I got a pair of Haviana Flip Flops that have the Brazilian Colors and Flag on them, we got Mike’s niece and nephew cute shirts and we found 2 paintings for the house. the one souvenir we try to find when we travel is a piece of art for the house, that way we remember our trip when we look at that piece. Unfortunately we are running out of wall space!

 

After the street market we hopped in a cab and headed up to Leblon to try Carlota for dinner, we had attempted to eat here Tuesday night but they weren’t ready to serve dinner. It was a cute bistro style restaurant with a good wine list. Mike ordered duck with potatoes while I had a ravioli with a mushroom and beef ragu. It was really good food!

 

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