Friday, Sept 24 - Downtown Rio on our own

How's this for great grafiti!!

I got up at 7:30 to clear skies and went down stairs to find our English next door neighbor feeding bananas to five or six marmosets! I had coffee, dulce de leche jelly roll and fruit, and eventually Bob came down to join me.

At ten we loaded up our maps and packs and set off on foot down the hill a ways to catch the bus to downtown. I stopped at a correio to buy postcard stamps and collectables for Gail, but the lady seemed amazed that I would want such a thing - maybe she only handles packages??

Anyway, we crossed the street to where we had been told busses stop and along came one with the fare written right on the front which made things simple ($R2.35 or ~$1.38). The small bus took off like a bat out of hell considering the bumpy cobblestones and windy streets and we tore off downhill and shortly were in the center of town where we disembarked. Delores had marked up our map and told us a list of “must sees”, and as she is going to drive us to the airport to meet our bird tour on Sunday, we wanted to be able to give her a good report!

                                          
We were right next to the Catedral Metropolitana, a very modern stone pyramid rising over 300’ that is truly amazing when you enter it. It is quite dark inside with a huge translucent cross at the apex and long shafts of stained glass each dominated by a color, one red, one green one blue and one yellow, running down the sides from the cross arms to the floor. The whole cathedral was beautifully reflected on the walls of a mirrored office building across the street.

We walked over to the large open Carioca Plaza filled with straw hat vendors and political sign and walked around trying to find the way to reach two small churches on a small hill, Morro de Santo Antonio, on one side of the plaza. At the bottom of the hill we found a dark tunnel marked “Igreja” (church) and walked down it to the end and found a tiny elevator. Feeling rather like Alice-in-Wonderland, we entered and the attendant, who took up most of the space, closed the door and we very slowly rose upward and were released onto a narrow construction corridor. At the end of the corridor were several Franciscan monks chatting so we felt we were in the right place!











We entered the Church of the Third Order of São Francisco, tiny chapel, every surface of the walls of which were covered with very elaborate gold Baroque carvings made in the early 1700’s. I’ve never seen so much gold in one small place before! Right next door is the 400 year old Church & Convent of Santo Antônio, a slightly larger and more austere church decorated mostly with what looked like Delft tiles of blue and white. Our mysterious elevator entrance had disappeared but we found a staircase that led down to a green metal door that was open and we returned to the modern world.

We were feeling peckish by then and found our way to Delores’ recommended Confeitaria Columbo, a wonderful one-hundred-year-old sweets shop/tea room.  We passed by cases of pastries and were seated in a two-story mirrored hall filled with small marble-topped tables and ordered a club sandwich, chocolate-hazelnut tart, beer and coke. The tart arrived and quite a while later an enormous sandwich made with three layers of thick toast, mayo, lettuce, cheese, tomato and two kinds of ham arrived, fortunately with an extra plate. There was no way one could fit that into one’s mouth, so we attacked it with fork and knife - quite good! The tart was creamy and delicious.

It was starting to cloud up but fortunately didn’t rain as we hadn’t’ brought our umbrellas. We set off to see the gilded interior of the Municipal theatre but it was closed, and we found the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (free admission for old folks!) and saw an excellent exhibit of Brazilian 20^th century art, and just as were leaving, happened on a wonderful exhibit of maps and natural history paintings and prints of Brazil dating back to the 16^th century which made Bob very happy!

We were tapping out by then and found the Bonde tram station. There are only a few bonde routes remaining for these charming electric trolleys. They are yellow, very narrow and high and all the tracks lead right into Santa Teresa, conveniently enough. The route takes you out of the station and onto the top of an old aqueduct over a highway with very little fencing at all - hard to imagine that a few passengers haven’t been lost at that point in the past. The tram slowly rambles up hill, with everyone shouting “Whoa” when someone grabs at the side bars and tries to climb aboard! We figured out which our stop was and clambered down and set off up hill to our hotel, arriving about 4:30, tired and grubby, but pretty happy with all the stuff we had managed to accomplish!

At 6:30 we set out back towards the first bus station where we had spotted a little German café that had been recommended. We entered the tiny café, Mike’s Haus, and got good veggie soup with tortellini and then had big plates of sausage, German potato salad and saukerkraut. A nice guitarist played during diner and we walked back home by eight. Delores had wanted us to return to downtown where on Friday nights a street is closed and restaurants and bars are open and people dancing salsa!! Sounded cool….