Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America

I had a pretty good first day in Rio, but I didn’t see all that much really. I had to get up at my hostel this morning, get all my stuff together, and then get out of there around 8:20am so I could be at my new apartment by 8:30am. Luckily for me, the new place is only a four minute walk from my hostel of last night. I got there right on time and the 24 hour security doorman let me into the building. It’s an older style of building, but still nice enough. I like the fact that there is security at the door. Makes me feel okay about leaving all my stuff in this apartment.

I took the 80 year old elevator up to the eighth floor and then had to walk up a small staircase to get to the apartment where Janine was waiting for me. She is a very nice lady, probably in her late 40s who is from here and speaks very little english. It is still way better than my Portuguese though, so I am very thankful. She showed me my room, and around the apartment, which was perfect. It is a a very small room, but it has a bed, wifi, and my own bathroom, so it has everything I need. I also have excellent wifi, which is really nice after not having it for the last week on the beaches.

I hung out at the apartment for a while and enjoyed the beautiful big roof terrace this apartment has, that is definitely bigger than the apartment itself. It gives a great view of Sugarloaf, and some of the surrounding neighborhoods. I grabbed a quick bite to eat and then had a walk over to Gloria metro station where I met up with Graeme and Hillary, who I haven’t seen since the Super Bowl in Sao Paulo. We took a walk up to the neighborhood of Santa Teresa which is supposed to be one of the nicer and more colonial neighborhoods in the city. It was nice enough, but it didn’t seem like anything too special to me.

One cool thing that happened was that we ran into one of Hillary’s old college roommates from Toronto, who just happens to be down here working on a research project. Graeme and Hillary had run into her briefly in the metro station when they were waiting for me, but it was so quick that they never got to exchange numbers or anything. Then, just by chance, we were walking through Santa Teresa and we passed her again! It’s incredible how small this world is! This time we were able to take a bit more time and Amanda came with us to a bar called Armazem Sao Thiago, which was recommended to me by Madalena.

We had a drink and made a plan to meet up with Amanda tonight at 8pm for dinner. Graeme, Hillary and I finished our pitcher of beer and then headed back down the hill to get back to the Gloria station. I split off from them because they were heading down to sit on the beach, and I’m just not much of a beach guy so I decided to come back and chill at the hostel (literally, in the A/C), and then just meet up with them later on.

I caught the metro down to the last stop, General Osorio, which is near Ipanema beach, and waited for Graeme, Hillary, and Amanda there. The only thing that made it difficult is that there are about 17 different entrances to the metro station, so I had no idea which one we were supposed to meet at. Luckily for me, I picked the right one and they arrived right on time. Amanda was right behind them, and we all went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Blue Agave. It was just okay food, but it was fairly cheap due to the Happy Hour deals.

We sat there until about 11pm chatting about travels and all sorts of things, and Hillary and Amanda had a chance to catch up. We all hopped on the metro and headed back up town and I got back to my apartment around 11:30pm. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like walking around this neighborhood at night, but it was actually alright. Luckily my apartment is only about two minutes form the metro station, but I was still a little concerned just because so many people told me how dangerous these big cities can be. I haven’t felt uncomfortable at all yet though, so I think it’ll be fine.