Settling In Nicely!

It’s been three long years since we set foot in Rio de Janeiro. The taxi brought us into Copacabana from the airport, last night, along the ‘front’ route (Linha Vermelha, Santos Dumont Airport, Flamengo and Botafogo), so we enjoyed the grandstand of some of the city’s finest, all-lit-up, apartment blocks.  

We can tell it’s been three years - fundamentally everything is familiar but we, again, as with fresh eyes, notice the small (and not so small!) things that mark the cultural differences - the way of holding a knife and fork to cut steak; the sudden high-pitch tone that sharply punctuates sentences, the boisterous gatherings of women of all ages, skin colour and girths celebrating birthdays on café terraces with whoops and balloons.

We braced ourselves for changes. Some, when we found them, like the closure of the value-for-money clothes shop, Lider, around our Copacabana block, were an inconvenience, while others, like the moving on of our newspaper kiosk man, Suleiman (see extra), to a new location, a sad loss . . . people don’t seem to leave forward contact details here.

Still, our doormen, local waiters at Tipicamente, laundry folk at Laundry Express, alternative newspaper lady (to the left out of our front door), staff and cash machines in Extra supermarket, the baristas in our fruit juice place (Transit Livre), most of the shops in the Antiques Market (some lovely retro-furniture ones gone), and the folk at Adega Pérola and Real Chopp were all present and correct.

We had a wonderful feijoada lunch at 420 (see close up in extra).   Maybe because it was a first in so long and the offerings in Barcelona such poor substitutes this one seemed the best ever - see extra!

Being around the block people, we didn’t go down to Copacabana beach at all, although it is only five minutes walk away. That can wait until the important things are done . . . reconnecting with our community here and, in a sense, ourselves.  I don’t think either of us realised what a big piece of us lies on this side of the Atlantic. We are very happy to be here. We only finally decided to come just over a week ago, after humming and hawing about the cost and so on, but we’ve made the right decision, for sure!

Suleiman:
https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/3601705