Our first proper cloudy day, but that didn’t stop it from being very humid and warm. We are very glad that we did the high up activities earlier in the week, it would have been a very poor view today.

As an aside, it’s strange how sounds can trigger thoughts so easily. The air conditioner is fairly rumbly in our room and sounds like the spin cycle of our washing machine. Every time I come out of the bathroom I think “the washing is almost done”. Weird.

The great cream cheese and mini baguettes at breakfast. Definitely going to miss these! I never really understood why Louie put cream cheese on bread for breakfast, and now I’m not sure I can go a day without it. I cannot overstate how much this trip has helped me to understand him and his zany Brazilian ways. Yes, I even ate a pizza using a knife and fork. I will not be adding tomato sauce and mayonnaise to pizza though, that can stay a Rio thing.

Coffee has been pretty good too, although it’s nowhere near as popular as NZ, where a coffee is front and centre. Here (in the tourist areas at least) cervejas and caprihinas feature far more often.

Our first stop of the day was to the Real Gabinete Português de Leitura in the city. We had a great driver who told us some fantastic stories and information about the areas and living in the city. I assume. No idea really, it was all in Portuguese so I just laughed when Louie laughed and looked out the window. I do know the car’s suspension is probably rooted, the cobbled streets are not kind.

The Real Gabinete Português de Leitura or Royal Portuguese Reading Room is a library voted as the fourth most beautiful library in the world, and it was impressive. Most of the books on display in sealed cabinets were antiques, but I have no knowledge of great Portuguese authors so I had to take cues from Louie on what was worth looking at.

The architecture and details of the library was more than enough to marvel at, absolutely amazing level of craft and skill, and definitely in my top 2 libraries.

I have no idea what this book is, but I have a feeling if we open it there’s going to be some drama with a chainsaw and an Army of Darkness.

The next stop was Louie’s old University, which was right next door to the library. It was a great chance to have a look into the everyday life of Brazil that most tourists won’t get to see. It was also fantastic to see Louie revisiting his old uni, and being recognised by one of the staff members.

Their central area is so much more exotic and interesting than the dirty old area at Vic Uni. A bit warmer too, and definitely less rainy.

Electrical standards seem to be slightly different here. Pretty sure this violates every rule in the book.

We have been watching all sorts of videos on YouTube of places to see in Rio, and one of them was the Confeitaria Colombo, sort of a NZ bakery but right classy. To get there we walked down small narrow cobbled streets that were absolutely teaming with shops, people and activity. As I’ve said before, Rio is such a mix of the new and old, the rich and poor in close proximity. On the way there are buildings that are preserved and restored next to ones of the same vintage in complete disarray. Somehow they have managed to stay standing, and often in use. The same as the people, with the Confeitaria there was a queue of well dressed tourists and derelicts asking random people for things. I have noticed that Louie seems to get asked / badgered far more often than I do, maybe I look far too much like a non-Portuguese speaker.

When compared it to a bakery above, it was in the loosest sense of the word. I don’t ever remember seeing this sort of cake at the local. It is expensive for here though, $7 NZD is a lot for a slice of cake.

A little way down the road we had lunch at a street restaurant, probably the coolest version I’ve ever been in. They mostly featured Brazilian dishes, but that lack of variety didn’t seem to have much of an effect as it was pretty busy. At 2pm there were still many people arriving.

At last I could try the famous and much talked about feijoada, a Brazilian black bean stew. Greens! It had greens! And no chips, although the deep fried pork belly slices kind of didn’t help. The feijoada has pork ribs and some sort of sausage in it. The pork and black beans part of the stew was great, but the sausage just wasn’t for me. The texture and taste didn’t tickle the happy part of my brain. One of the staff members, manager maybe, came and asked us about some of the English menu names, because it doesn’t always translate well. A few times we’ve seen “Bife cavalo” listed which directly translates to “horse steak”. The manager asked about this, and wanted to know a better translation than what he had, which was Beef on horseback. Louie said to not translate it, just write what it actually is or leave it as the Portuguese name, but put an explanation underneath in English: steak with a fried egg on top.

After lunch we continued our walk and ended up in the museum of the Banco Brasil. Alongside examples of the opulence of the banking bigwigs of past, they had a really interesting display on the history of the Brazilian money during the 90s where they seemed to change the currency every year to battle the rampant inflation. Since the 1940s they have had eight different currencies, with the one before the current Real only lasting 10 months.

I have absolutely no idea in which order this note came, but this $500,000 Cruzeiros is worth about $13 NZD.

I was wondering why this note had the cover of the Sepultura album on it, but Louie reminded me they are a Brazilian band which makes more sense. Google told me that they took the image from the money for their album, mystery solved. Yeah, not a great mystery but this is a bank museum, gotta get the excitement wherever you can.

After the bank we passed by the the Candelária Church, the site of a massacre in the 1993 of eight homeless people, six below the age of 18. A pretty sad story, with all those involved connected to the militia or police and all remain free from prison despite being found guilty or admitting it.

The most government building I’ve seen in a long time, outside of Wellington. This is the Brazilian Navy HQ, and strangely where Louie was approached by a woman handing out flyers advertising dodgy cash loans.

The destination of our walk was the Museu do Amanhã, or the Museum of Tomorrow. Apparently the future holds video screens and art installations, going by the collection here. An amazing building though, definitely worth visiting.

Rubik’s cube kind of thing. No idea what it was about, but I did find NZ!

A claustrophobics nightmare, mirrors, tight gaps and people everywhere, and very warm as well.

The most surround sound I’ve ever heard, 100s of speakers in the gaps around the area, that was shaped like a big ol hooha.

The pool area, with the palm trees looking like a hurricane is on the way.

We wandered through a market area and bought the obligatory tshirts, took a tram that was the twin of the Sydney one and slightly more packed and went on the Ferris wheel. Either the wind died down or it is bloody sturdy but it was very smooth and would have been spectacular if clouds weren’t covering everything.

Sugarloaf mountain, 70s buildings and favelas – so Rio

Ha! Take that big Jesus, you can’t see us sinning today!

To end the day we went for a relaxing Uber drive through the dark raining night during rush hour to a large shopping mall. Along with almost everywhere else, they are open late every night so it was easy to find a place to eat. We did browse the food court but it was all the same beef, rice, chips and farofa or variations of it. There was an “English” outlet that sold baked potatoes, not something that I thought they were renowned for, but it seemed reasonably popular. We passed on all of these, and headed to a little restaurant thing. Salad! I got salad. Kind of. It was lettuce, cheese and croutons. Mignon sandwich was filled with Gorgonzola cheese so that got scraped off.

Louie had the salmon and some sort of lentil thing. Each of these dishes were less than $20 NZD!

Finally we come to the disaster of the day. Desert. Looks delicious enough with mine on the right. I got about half way through it then realised I had little bits of nuts in my mouth. Freeze & remove. I asked Louie to check the menu to see what was in it. Some sort of broken up chocolate bonbon thing (like a Ferrero Rocher), but the tingling / swelling of my lips said otherwise. He looked it up and said it was cashews and amendoim. Okay, but what are amendoim? Peanuts. Shit. Luckily it must have only been trace amounts, but definitely something there. No technicolor end to the meal but I didn’t risk finishing it, even though it was so good!

The hosts at the restaurant were great, very apologetic that they didn’t put a note on the menu etc and didn’t charge us for it. What’s a holiday without a surprise allergic reaction.