Journey to the World Cup: Day 2
6:30-7:30am - The taxi ride to the apartment was great. The city is so lively, with beautiful graffiti, and soccer fields as far as the eye can see.
7:30am Rio time - My dad and I take our first step into our apartment, where his friend Eric and Eric's son Kai have already been for a day or two. It is a mind-blowingly fantastic apartment in a great location, and there is even a security gate at the beginning of the neighborhood. Most of all, the world-famous Christ the Redeemer statue is RIGHT outside of our window. I'm blown away.
7:45-9am - Now the fun part. Kai goes back to bed after letting us in, while Eric, my dad and I take a walk to get breakfast (we're about a 10 minute walk from the main street with tons of markets and other joints). We stop by this little corner store, where I have an açai smoothie and some pão (bread). While my father has his coffee and cheese balls, I go next door to buy groceries. And by groceries, I mean Oreos, bread, and shampoo. Anyway, as we walked back to our apartment, we ran into this lovely older woman who spoke to us for 30 minutes as she manned her tiny little roadside organic food store. After half an hour of practicing my Portuguese (she was impressed!), we bought a famous Brazilian drink called cachaça, which comes in a wine bottle. I'm not gonna drink it, but I'll live vicariously through my dad on this one.
9am-12pm - Just sat around the house, read my book, exercised, sat on the beautiful balcony, and Skyped Kathryn for an hour. Getting ready for a crazy day.
12-5pm - First of all, the four of us went out to lunch at some random place that we just chose, and it obviously turned out to be fantastic. Then we finally made our way to Ipanema Beach. I wish I could describe to you all how many soccer balls were on this beach. Every ten feet or so, there was a circle of men/women playing keepie-uppie with each other. Elsewhere, there were soccer goals and volleyball nets for people to play, too. Oh yeah, and I met three footballing legends: Christian Vieri, Juan Sebastian Verón (got a selfie with him), and Fabio Cannavaro. All three of them were playing volleyball with a soccer ball, without using their hands, and it was just a beautiful sight.
5:30-7:30pm - I'll make this part short. My dad and I took the longest taxi ride of all time back to the apartment. Rush hour in Rio is beyond anything you could even dream of.
8pm-bedtime - I plan on spending all night looking online for tickets to the France vs. Germany game tomorrow, since we technically don't have tickets yet... But don't worry, if we can't find then online, we will definitely just get them from the stadium. Look for me in my Perry costume!
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