My friend Adelaida was celebrating her 30th birthday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil along with a group of her friends. What a great excuse to visit Brazil. The last time I was in Rio was 2016, I had flown from Japan to catch a little bit of Carnaval en route to Argentina. That worked out pretty well considering I was there on my own so I was excited to return for a different occasion and a large group of friends.
I stayed in Copacabana for the entire 16 days I was in Rio in three different rental apartments. The first two were shared with the friend group and the last I was solo in for about a week after everyone else departed back to the USA.
The highlight of the trip was of course the New Year’s celebration on Copacabana beach, replete with an internationally-celebrated fireworks show. It is a tradition in Brazil to dress in all-white outfits and so we all did. We were on Copacabana beach, directly underneath the fireworks that were exploding above us. Truly a bucket list experience.
Another fun memory from Rio entailed prowling the nightlife as a group of Americans. I’m well past my late-night nightlife stage of life (I required daily naps) but it was fun flowing with a group as someone who travels as a lone wolf. It’s good to get out of your comfort zone from time to time, even if it involves drinking shots of alcohol and going to sleep later than you want. Thanks for the opportunities to do both, Adelaida.
My morning routine involved walking to Copacabana beach and doing my daily gym routine on the publicly accessible pull-up bars stationed every hundred meters alongside the wide esplanade abutting Copacabana beach. The weather in Rio during the summer is hot, but nearly a year acclimating in the Maldives made the heat easy to handle along with a T-shirt, shorts, and Havianas.
My friends arranged reservations for us at a Michellin star restaurant which was the first time I have eaten at one. The experience was better than the food itself as going around a table of ten people with everyone volunteering their opinions turned eating into a team activity. While I’m no foodie (the opposite, actually) it’s fun to hear the highly volatile and fastidious opinions of others who are. Watching sneering grimaces and eye rolls is worth my cost of admission. Of course, I swallowed everything put in front of me, but some things I liked more than others. I amused myself with the new experience of absolutely hating one of the cocktails I ordered. It featured pickled cucumbers and pickled daikon radish and so naturally I was intrigued. Perhaps it would taste sour, salty, or umami? It ended up having the strongest smell of nearly any food I can think of — truly of rotten, dead feet. Please recall that I am the easiest of people to please at the dinner table and harbor an abysmal sense of smell. It was hard to bring this cocktail to my mouth without being inundated by an overpowering stink. Because of this though it became my favorite and most memorable aspect of the evening. It brought a smile to my face just wafting this putrid fragrance towards my friends. I might never forget just how loathsome the corpse-smelling cocktail from the Michelin-star restaurant in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was! Was this an intentional effect by the establishment? Probably not. Does it matter? I don’t think so. May all of us be thus motivated by such serendipitous stink.
