After breakfast we spent almost all of Thursday on Copacabana beach. The weather was perfect for it and because it isn't quite yet winter and a weekday, it wasn't too crowded.
Our hotel had a couple of guys on the beach to keep everyone happy by providing umbrellas, chairs, food, coconuts, and drinks. I don't think we ever got their names but the two guys were great and we talked to them every day.
It was pretty fun to spend time on the beach. Throughout our stay we noticed several difference between going to the beach in the US and in Brasil, besides the amount of fabric in bathing suits. In Brazil, the beach is a social event. No one brings a book or headphones. People spend their time people watching, talking to others, kicking around a futbol, playing volleyball and a similar game that combine volleyball and soccer played on a volleyball court but you can't use your hands, or even jogging and talking to people. Also, instead of having the occasional ice cream cart come by, you can buy pretty much any kind of food on the beach, with vendors carrying all sorts of things, even grills to make a kind of grilled cheese on a stick that Lelaine was quite fond of. Third, whereas any item on the beach seems to marked up considerably in the US, in Rio things are actually cheaper on the beach. It is tough to say no to a vendor when the beer he is selling is less than $1USD. Chris read that the reason for this is because outside of soccer, the beach is the only thing in Rio where your economic or social class is considered irrelevant, so it is designed so that everyone can afford to have a good time. Everyone seemed pretty nice, except for the vendor who told Chris he had a size 5xl Kaka jersey that would fit him.
For lunch we wondered around Copacabana and went into one of the many juice bars/chopp bars/market/lunch counters/bakeries (a strange combo but they are everywhere) and ordered a chicken. The frango was cooked rotisserie style and was quite tasty.After lunch we went back to the beach when something happened for the first time in Lelaine's life...she got sunburned! Chris got a kick out of it since his pale self is always burning even when he slathers on SPF 30 while Lelaine lubes up in tanning oil. Luckily Lelaine's burn wasn't too bad although Chris managed to completely miss a couple spots on his forehead that turned a nice shed of red that resembled an apple.
For dinner we went to Porcao, one of Rio's best churrascarias, which happens to sit on the water in Flamengo and has great views of Sugar Loaf, Christ the Redeamer, and the trendy neighborhood of Botafogo. After the mandatory pre-dinner caipirinha, we launched an all out assault on about 15 different kinds of beef, chicken, pork, sausages, and a couple of exotic items we couldn't identify but take eating a second bite to try to figure out what it was (chicken liver or heart?). You can't really tell from the picture below, the but tan thing behind Chris are a few thousand wine corks stuck together to form one giant wine cork.
Interesting Copacabana fact: the title of this post is loosely taken from the Barry Manilow song Copacabana. Sadly, the song isn't about the famous bairro in Rio. And the Duran Duran song Rio isn't about the one-time seat of the Portuguese empire.
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