April 30,

I awoke to someone shouting/singing from the street outside! The neighborhood we are staying in seems nice. But the first morning when we got out, we noticed someone sleeping on the sidewalk right out of our entrance. On the tour we saw quite a number of people throughout the city that were sleeping and living outside, a bunch of homeless. This doesn’t bode well for Rio or Brazil in general. I feel this city has had more of this than most places. Enough said.

We got around, readied and had our Javas with breakfast of oatmeal with PB and Nutella to jazz it up. Then I started blogging as I was a couple of entries behind. Jeff read and planned. Our place is set fairly well. There is a desk area built in the bedroom, but I have been using the glass type bar table area. It is a lowered extension of the countertop, so there are regular backed chairs to sit in. The kitchen has a “L-shaped” counter with the sink in one leg and a drop four burner stovetop in the other leg. The refrigerator is along a wall making the set-up an overall “U-shape”. But the best part, it’s large enough that Jeff and I can work around each other; but small enough to work well.

Anyway, I spent all morning into the early afternoon getting the blogs done, as yesterday was a big day! I felt I left out so much, but it was already long enough! Around 1500 we set out for lunch. We wanted pizza, and went to Mamma Bette. We shared a small Mamma Premium, like a supreme – having ‘red onion, oregano, natural tomato sauce, special cured Mozzarella, pepperoni, homemade calabresa sausage, bacon, topped with Parmesan cheese’; and a Mixed Salad -’house salad featuring a medley of mixed greens, carrots, red onion, cherry tomatoes and the Chef’s signature vinaigrette with chicken. Jeff had a beer and I had a glass of Chilean Cab Sav. It was delicious and hit our spots nicely. We paid 177,74 BRL ($35.86).

When we finished we went on a walkabout to a Decathlon Store. We are in dire need of replacement shorts! It is humid, muggy and warm here. It has been in the low to mid eighties, but the humidity is oppressive. I felt like I was back in SE Asia! So we have gone from one extreme to almost another – using heaters/stove fireplaces to AC!!! Anyway, we walked about 2.5 miles to the store, found what we wanted and left. We started back walking by way of the beaches – Ipanema and Copacabana. (As I write this I’m singing, as I was then…🎵the girl from Ipanema goes walking🎶🎵)!  But the humidity was getting to us. We walked on the Ipanema Beach, taking in more permanent beach volleyball courts (that are being used in this temperature). We noticed that the waves coming in are more on the caliber of surf waves, pretty large, crashing into the beach! But people are everywhere and enjoying the “rolling thunder”! We opted to cut back through the city from here. It was more direct to our place and we had seen Copacabana Beach already. As we left the beach we noticed a very congested part of the beach.

We arrived back at our place and took a shower! We settled in for the night having a snack of bread with an Italian Pinot Grigio wine. A productive day.