Day 248 - I go to Rio

Salvador to Rio de Janeiro - Ibis Hotel

We arrived at our hotel at 6am so were very lucky that we could check in so early. After a nap we headed off to pick up our tickets for Carnaval. They have a strange system where the only way to collect your tickets is to line up at the office, needless to say it was very busy and the set up quite crazy but eventually we had our very, very expensive pieces of paper in our hands.

After depositing them in our safe we decided to walk to the Sambadrome, where the parade is held to check out whether it was feasible to walk there on our own. Everyone hears so many crazy stories re safety and muggings so we are always on high alert to try not to put ourselves in tricky situations. Walking down the street three men walked towards Mike split to each side as one said "mi amigo", and went for M's shirt pocket - which was empty - lesson learned from Zambia!

We arrived at the Sambadrome to find lots of people working on the set up and absolutely no security! We wandered through Section 9 where our seats were to be, then walked onto the runway, walking the full length to the end, bizarre!! It's difficult to imagine any other place where you could enter a major event site two days before.

From there we caught the train to Impanema and walked along the beach front, it was a little dissapointing as the buildings facing the beach were very old ugly highrises, not the bars and restaurants we had expected, these were all a few blocks back.

We caught the metro back to where we were staying, and visited the Rio De Janeiro Cathedral, which from the outside looks nothing like a church. After that we headed out for a dinner, but every single restaurant in the downtown area that we wanted to go to was shut at 8pm on a Friday night! In desperation we ended up eating at our hotel, though if we had gone further afield (e.g. to the beach area) we could have found something..