Sarah’s back in Seattle- and currently waking up between 5:30 and 6:30 am on a regular basis without an alarm clock. Seems like perhaps the change in time zones (UK-East Coast-West Coast) in 5 days hasn’t been exactly smooth. Although perhaps it’s partly due to the 4:30 am subway we caught on Sunday morning (to get to Manhattan in time for a 5 am Super Shuttle to Newark Airport).
No camera cord yet, but fortunately Alice has dutifully been posting on our time in Croatia.
We’re at our final international destination of the trip… Market Harborough (for those of you who don’t know, Market Harborough is a bustling metropolis northwest of London). Tomorrow we’re back to New York for a few days and then… Sarah’s off to Seattle to go back to work on Monday (yikes!)… Damon will have a bit more time on the east coast before we meet up in Palo Alto to drive the car back to Seattle.
Fortunately both Jesse & Nanda and Glyn & Jo have cords which we could use to download our photos. Here are a few photos from our time in Brazil (more after we return to the US on the 18th).
The national drink of Brasil is the caipirinha- made up of cachaça, limes, and sugar. Cachaça is a liquor distilled from sugar cane- and it packs a punch.
One of Sarah’s favorite snacks was pão queijo (cheese bread)
Portugese turned out to be a pretty challenging language for us- we were able to understand it when it was written most of the time but it was a lot harder to say something that was comprehensible to native speakers. Occasionally, our instincts proved to be wrong. For instance, puxe means pull.
Rio de Janeiro has a lot of exhibit space- we saw exhibits ranging from graffitti to political cartoons to photography to engravings. Here’s a shot of Jesee at the graffitti exhibit.
Favelas (slums) are scattered throughout Rio and are often on hillsides beside upperclass neighborhoods. Our friend Michael suggested that we take a tour of one. Our guidebook recommended Favela Tour which we really enjoyed. It was a a good opportunity to go into a favela without having to be (as) concerned about security. We had the opportunity to meet a few artisans who were selling their art work.
Here is a view of a favela:
Here is a view of the famous Ipanema beach:
From Corcovado (where the Cristo stands) there were some amazing views of Rio, including this one of Pão de Açúcar(Sugar Loaf).
During our trip to Itatiaia park, we were the only guests at Hotel Donati the first night. Just like when we were the only guests at Milarepa in Costa Rica, a troop of monkeys came by our room the first day.
Besides being set in a national forest, another notable feature of Hotel Donati was the indoor heated pool.
For you geologists out there, that is in fact a large diorite boulder that they simply built the pool around.
It’s been a whirlwind few days… we left Rio on Wed to fly to NY, spent the night with our friends Debika and Justin in Brooklyn, repacked at Eric’s place, and then hopped on a flight to England. Wednesday and Thursday were somewhat surreal travel days… For starters, even though our flight was from Rio de Janeiro to New York we had one stop in Sao Paulo. Even though the flight number was the same, we were required to exit the plane, go through security again, and re-board. And we had different seats for the 2nd leg of the flight. This shouldn’t have really been a surprise since on our flight into Rio from Sao Paulo we mistakenly followed signs for the Domestic Connections (thinking that Domestic meant within the same country). After clearing immigration and waiting for our bags in the customs area we were told that our bags had gone directly to Rio as it was an international connection (the plane was headed to Paris eventually). So back into international departures and onto the plane.
We thought things would be a bit more straight forward in New York. Which they were until some guy ran through the security line at JFK resulting in the terminal being evacuated. Eric had dropped us off early in hopes of avoiding rush hour traffic so we were enjoying a beer and a glass of wine when we heard about the security breach and that no one was being allowed in or out of the terminal. After a while they evacuated the terminal and our flight was delayed over 3 hours. Now we’re spending a few days with our friends Glyn and Jo in Market Harborough and on Sunday will meet up with Colleen to go to Slovenia where we’ll meet up with Alice and Jon.
| Angel’s Landin… on Zion National Park | |
 | Laura on Knitted Christmas Gifts |
 | An American in Londo… on College Crowd |
 | sarahanddamon on Courtesy of my Dad |
 | Jenn Wald on Courtesy of my Dad |
