Ipanema

Jan and Lourdes, my brother and sister-in-law arrived in Rio about two weeks ago, on Friday night, after landing in Sao Paulo and taking a six hour bus ride from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro. Working in aviation gives him discounts on flights to Brazil but not in Brazil so they decided to take a bus and save the money. We have had many family members and friends want to visit and for whatever reasons it never panned out, so it was fantastic to have my brother and sister-in-law here with us for a week. We intentionally had avoided going to many of the tourist sites in the city, in case someone would come to visit and we could go together.

Their apartment was in Ipanema, a five minute walk from the General Osorio Metro station, restaurants, shops and Ipanema beach. We decided to spend Saturday afternoon outside, enjoying the warm sun, and the sights and sounds of Ipanema beach. The beach is especially alive on the weekend, with the crowds playing volleyball, football, surfing, or just flaunting their beach bodies while basking in the sun. On Sunday the road closest to the beach is a pedestrian walkway, with runners, skateboarders, cyclists and leisurely walkers. My brother and his wife are not really beach people. I know because those who are, without a doubt, will spend their first day in Rio at the beach soaking in the sun, especially coming from the extreme winter we have had in Toronto. Instead, we chose to stroll along the road passed vendors selling beach accessories, and circles of Cariocas and gringos alike enjoying an agua de coco or cerveja in one of the many tiny beach shacks. We headed to the Arpoador, the peninsula that juts out along the coast between Ipanema and Copacabana, climbing to the edge to see the shoreline of the Ipanema beach before us. By the end of the week I didn't want to drink another caipirinha, but not this Saturday! We stopped to order caipirinhas, Lourdes and I got coconut water and we made general plans for the week.

Praca General Osorio, a square near the Metro station, hosts the Hippie Fair, an Ipanema tradition since 1968. I think the fair was much larger at one time, with as many as 700 stalls but now it's a fairly humble one. This market had a few stalls selling clothing (bikinis and dresses), souvenirs, jewellery and most notibly, beautiful artwork on canvas. Maybe we went on a quieter Sunday than usual, but the things we saw there dimmed in comparison to many of the beautifully made goods sold at the San Telmo market in Buenos Aires or Otavalo market in Ecuador. Most of the vendors were able to communicate in English, giving you an idea of the crowd that shops there and a lot of items were overpriced. However, it was still a really pleasant spot to spend a Sunday afternoon, window shopping and looking at some stunning pieces on canvas, mainly of the landscape of this beautiful city. It is at times like this that I see the advantage to taking shorter and more frequent trips, rather than one long year of travelling. I would have loved to purchase some artwork for our home in Toronto from the markets I mentioned before, but the idea of carrying it with us from place to place with all the things we already have and the risk of it getting damaged deterred us both from purchasing anything. I think the deterrent is more the first than the latter. After a bit of window shopping, Jan and Lourdes decided on purchasing a really comfortable, beige coloured hammock, one that you can sit upright in.

The distinctively spicy and pungent fragrance of palm oil in which acaraje is fried in, drew us in. The first time we tried acaraje was in Salvador, but since then we have had it several times in Rio as street food. It is essentially a bean fritter sandwich with a spicy okra and fried shrimp filling. As most of you probably have already guessed from our blog, there is a reason I haven't been raving about the complexity of food flavour on this continent. Brazil so far has not changed my opinion and although I have eaten quite a few delicious meals out, the flavour palette has tended to be mild or salty. Acaraje is probably the most spice-infused appetizer I have had in Brazil, and since it reminds me so much of vadai, we had to have some! I don't think Jan thought it was really that spicy, but I have had to adjust my spice standards a little :-)