We landed about 9:30 this morning and have spent the day running errands, doing laundry, and picked up Clifford who was so excited to see us! I missed his cute little furry face 
We spent some time talking about our overall impressions of Rio on the flight home and we enjoyed the beaches, walking the neighborhoods and eating some really good food! Now a vacation is never perfect so a few of the downsides we talked about were the Rio is very expensive, it is a long way to go for a city that really needs 3-4 days unless you are really beach goers. We tend to travel to different places each time we go somewhere so right now Rio isn’t high up on the list of places to go back to but we did have a great time! We got more sleep then we have in months, saw some amazing neighborhoods and historical sites all while enjoying good food. You can’t complain about that.
I am thinking about using the picture below are our next Christmas Card, what do you think? 
Is that not the cutest Santa!
The last day of vacation is always so bittersweet! We were ready to come home but not ready to end our relaxation. We got a good workout in the morning and then headed back into Copacobana to have the traditional lunch of Feijoda. Casa de Feijoda was one of the recommended places and the guide book did not fail! Feijoda is a traditional bean stew made with meat and is the typical feast for a late Saturday afternoon. The food was amazing! We ordered the traditional feast and had a starter of a small soup, a few pieces of appetizer sausage and then the food came out. And it was a lot of food!
Dessert was my favorite part of the meal, a pumpkin type puree, a caramelized banana custards and fresh caramel. Such amazing flavors!
We headed back to the hotel and took one last dip in the pool and then sadly headed to the airport! So sad to say goodbye to Rio.
In further continuance of our vacation mode we had a leisurely morning and then left around 2 for a Favela tour, which is similar to a shanty town. 20 percent of Rio’s 6 million plus population leaves in a favela. I was initially hesitant to invade these individuals privacy but the tour company puts a percentage of the profits back into the area. These are very poor areas with a high density of people all around the city. For years these people were disenfranchised and not recognized by the government of Brazil, to the point that these areas were not even on city maps. Since the late 1980’s there are have been additional resources put into these areas but defiantly not enough!
Many of the locations do not even have an address, it is literally structure built upon structure with whatever materials they may have found. Some have electricity and running water but many do not. When you walk through the tiny maze of alleys you are amazed at the lack of air quality and how intricate these communities are. They have stores, beauty salons and a lot of drug related crime. We felt relatively safe walking through with the tour guide but this is not a place I would want to end up not knowing where I was going.
My words really can not do this justice:
