The view from the foot of Christ the Redeemer
My mother is visiting Brazil until early September. At the beginning of last week, my friend arrived with his wife and son from Sweden. We went on a road trip for a week. We spent the first few days in Paraty. You can read about that in another post.
Last weekend, we were in Rio. We drove there one afternoon from Paraty. We stayed at a beach south of the city for four nights and five days.
On the first day, we went to see the famous statue that overlooks the city: Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer). That's the view from the top in the picture above.
The mountains in Rio are amazing. The rocks are very, very steep and rise high above the city. We took a cable car to the top of the mountain. My son fell asleep on the way up. This is a picture of him enjoying the sights!
There were so many tourists. I was very surprised. I went there once in 2008, and there were not many people at all. It seems like Brazil is becoming a popular travel destination.
The next day, I got food poisoning and had to stay the whole day in our hotel. Everyone else went to the beach. I slept it off, and by Sunday I was OK.
We spent our last day in Rio at Copacabana. We walked around in the afternoon, and then in the evening we went to a bar by the sea to listen to live music. The location was amazing, but the music was abysmal!
We drove back to São Paulo earlier this week. I spent a couple of days showing my friends around the city, and then have been back to work and real life since Thursday. It's good to get back to my own bed and back into the swing of things!
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Language note: In Japanese when you travel, you count "stays" (泊), but in English we count "nights".
fall asleep — go to sleep without planning to, ex. "I fell asleep on the train and missed my station."
food poisoning — when you become suddenly very ill because you ate something bad or unclean
sleep it off — sleep until you feel better, usually for a hangover, ex. "I have a terrible hangover. I think I had better sleep it off."
abysmal — terrible, awful
back into the swing of things — back to the regular routine and rhythm
