One of the most amazing cities in the World!

I have no idea where to start when describing my time in Rio. I spent a whole week there, half of the time with the GAP group I travelled with, and the other half with Jules because she came out to meet me for the last two weeks of my travels. Anyway, instead of putting everything in chronological order I´ll just give a short description of everything I got up to in this mental city...

I visited the famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema which were just like the way they look in all the brochures and travel programs...perfectly sunny with soft white sands in an amazing setting, but also with a ridiculious amount of men in dodgy Speedos and too many women with scary boob jobs! However, both beaches were great to sun-worship on and it was also a good laugh getting wiped out by the large waves on Copacabana because they were pretty strong and violent, but certainly took away the pain of the previous night´s beers!

I took so many photos in this city that I´m going to bore you all to death with them when I get back!

I went to watch a footy game at the famous and gigantic Maracana stadium. The home side Fluminese were playing Atletico in the league and won 2-0 with a couple of pretty decent goals, so it was a good game to watch, but the two best bits to experience were watching the locals go absolutely crazy for the whole 90 minutes and go into an almost Carnaval-esque party, even if the football was getting a bit slow! The second highlight was when I managed to get onto the big screen just before the game kicked off because I can now smugly say that I´ve been shown on the screen in one of the biggest and most famous stadiums in the World!

One day myself and the group had a wander around the Central aera of the city and visited a strtange cube shaped building that is HQ for Brazilian Petrobras who are the biggest petrol company in the country, and we also went inside what I can only describe as the wierdest church I have ever been in...it was shaped like some sort of giant concrete tepee/cone and had enough space for 20,000 worshippers. I wouldn´t say I was overly fond of the building, but it was certainly impressive. That day we also went up to an area called Santa Terese on its famous yellow train, which was very rustic but had a cool bohemian feeling going on too.

What else did I do? Oh yeah, once Jules arrived we obviously had to go up both Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain. Both give stunning views of the city (but from different perspectives) and I can see why they´re such famous tourist spots because they are simply amazing to look at and I´ve got numerous panoramic photos of Rio which I´m quite pleased with...expect to see them up on Facebook soon! We went up to Sugarloaf (on a super-scary cable car) just before sunset so that was also really special because it was amazing to watch the sun set behind Christ the Redeemer and then watch the lights of Rio appear like lots of small candles, very memorable I must say!

We also went into Tijuca National Park just a few miles outside of the main city, which was slightly bizarre because you go from the dense metropolis of Rio to the dense Atlantic rainforest in a matter of minutes, but it was nice and peaceful in that area and we had a good walk around some small waterfalls and the humid jungle.

Also visited a modern art museum (check us trying to be cultured!) and went to Rio´s war memorial which is fairly impressive, if a little simple...gets to the point I guess. Overall, Rio de Janeiro has easily been one of my favourite places of the whole trip and I suppose that that was always going to the case, but it truly is an amazing city placed in an equally amazing setting. There´s loads to do in the city and I probably could have stayed for longer and created even more special memories, but it was time to move on and head inland again to visit Iguassu Falls!