Living the Life in Rio

After 30 long hours of flying and airports we arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Wednesday afternoon. That evening we were really tired so we just walked around the area near our apartment and found a place to eat. It ended up being really expensive for the amount of food we got. We soon realized that Rio, even though it's in Brazil, is an expensive place to stay. They are used to having a lot of tourists.

On Thursday we went to go see the city's most famous landmark, the Cristo Redentor, or Christ the Redeemer statue. We took a train to get to the top of the mountain. Here we are at the top.

And here's the beautiful view from the top.

Later that day we walked around the downtown part of Rio--the place most tourists don't venture. As long as we left before dark and avoided taking out our camera in certain places we´re fine walking around there. It gave Christina a taste of what it's really like there. Christina enjoyed taking pictures of old churches;

From a ways away we saw this strange building in the distance. My guess was that it was a Catholic Cathedral. I was right. It's a different but cool building. Christina is holding a flower that a street mime (the kind that stays still like a statue until someone gives them money, but she didn't know he would move) made her out of a napkin when she gave him some money.

It's very big inside.

On Friday we walked over to the famous Copacabana Beach (it was a long walk).

We didn't know if there would be a place to change so we didn't bring our swimsuits. We just played in the water up to our knees;

After playing and walking along the beach for a little while we took a bus to the Jardim Botânico (Botanical Garden). They had some pretty cool vegetation.

Where's Jordan?

Some really big palm trees.

Rio was a lot of fun although we're glad to have moved onto an area that I´m more familiar with (Natal). We will try to keep the blog updated, but we realized yesterday that we forgot our camera charger. So we'll have to buy disposable cameras which makes it harder to put pictures online.