glory hallelujah!

The internet's back, which means this blog is back in business. Please excuse the excessively long post that will ensue; I have a whole week of Carnival break to catch up on. That makes it sound crazy, in truth it was very subdued. We mostly strategically avoided the "blocos" (block parties, of sorts) and spent a lot of time relaxing. But in any case, let us begin.

Santa Theresa
Okay, we went to one bloco. But we went with Thais who knows her stuff and it was a very small one at that. The bloco was essentially a street that was blocked off, live music, large crowd and lots of dancing. Oh, and costumes. It was an interesting sight to see but my favorite part of the evening was Santa Theresa itself.

Santa Theresa sits on top of a hill very close to downtown Rio. In previous years there were trolleys that would take people up and down the hills and around the small town. Unfortunately, these trolleys were deemed dangerous and were taken down some years ago. But the trolley tracks still line the streets of the quaint little neighborhood.

It's a very art-driven community with plenty of funky coffee shops, bookstores and bars. One of the houses had its entire teeny yard filled to the brim with recycled sculptures. Also, the view was fantastic. From the right spots, we could see the city for miles and miles stretching out below the neighborhood. It was beautiful at night and I cannot wait to go back during the day.

Tijuca Forest
Thais was kind enough to invite us to a little going away picnic for her friend at Tijuca Forest.

A little history lesson: Tijuca is an entirely man-made forest. At one time this area was a victim of deforestation, but when one of Brazil's emperors realized the negative effects of this he ordered the entire area to be replanted and voila, a beautiful forest.

a tile map

bamboo tunnel

Chinese View

"The best view in Rio." -Thais

More food talk: at a restaurant later in the day I got a banana and cinnamon grilled cheese sandwich and frute de conde juice. I was in heaven.

A lot of the week was spent working on TPA (which I will devote a special post to soon) and some forced relaxation due to our internet being out. I read two books which is probably more than I've read in the past 3 months so I was pretty happy about that. Last but not least...

Carnival Parade

We left at 6:30pm on Saturday and returned home at 6am Sunday. Absolutely worth  it. There are not enough words in the dictionary to describe this experience. The word that I keep using to describe it is colorful. In every sense of the word. 

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

how we looked

how we felt