Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 04:06:45 -0800 (PST)
Subject: The last email... the "bad side" of Rio
Bom dia,
I'm back in Miami now waiting for my flight to SFO.
Yesterday I went to downtown Rio to roam around there. For a city with upwards
of 6 million people, the downtown area on a Sunday afternoon was unbelievably
empty! Well, except for all the homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks.
That's the thing about big cities -- when you're IN them, its usually not such
a good experience, but they look wonderful from a distance!
I took the metro to downtown, wanting to go to the "Arcos de Lapa" which is a
250-year old aqueduct with large arches under it -- the photos in my tourbook
and a few postcards I saw looked nice. So I went.
Wrong.
I dont know when those photos were taken, but frankly it just looked completely
run-down to me! There's graffiti all over the place (actually some of it was
VERY nice and artsy, but mostly it was the typical inner-city graffiti). That
ruined the beauty of it for me. I did take a couple of pictures but I wasn't
feeling too safe taking my camera out in that neighborhood (especially after
the previous night's conversation!) There is also a tram that goes on top of
the arches to a hillside community. I wanted to go there because its supposed
to be nice, but the tram station was closed and deserted. Hmmmm, guess they
dont operate on Sundays!
There's also a triangular church nearby whose interiors are supposed to be
nice, but I didn't go there. Probably would have had Sunday services going on
there anyway -- no wonder the "Centro" area was deserted!
After that I just hopped on the first bus that came by, and it happened to go
to Leblon beach. I hung around there and at Ipanema beach rest of the afternoon
(no I did not meet the girl from Ipanema). Finally took the bus back to the
airport at 6pm.
No traffic this time -- reached the airport at 7pm, even the check-in was
pretty much immediate, but the line through security was something I have NEVER
seen in my life!!! The security gate was about half-way in between the
terminal, and the line stretched from there all the way to one of the far
walls, and then all the way back about 3/4th the way to the other end of the
terminal!!! I remember looking at my watch at 7:15, so I got in line a few
minutes before that... it took 2 hours 40 minutes to just reach the passport
control!!! After that, the x-ray/security checks and a sprint to my departure
gate -- when I reached the gate the plane had just started boarding!
Wow, 1/2 hour later and I would've missed the flight... I've never seen a line
that long! I had wanted to go to the admirals club there for a shower before
the flight, but now I was just glad to have actually made it on board on time!
Well, that's all for now ... in about an hour I'll be on the plane back to San
Francisco! Except for last night, there have been no "holiday-related" delays
this whole thanksgiving weekend! Rio was fantastic, or at least everything
outside Rio was fantastic -- I didn't care for the inner city much... and my
next trip is back to Europe over christmas/new years!!
Until then, auf weidersehn and tot ziens (thats Dutch)!
-- me.
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