Well, Carnaval is over now and the crowds of partygoers & crossdressers have gone home. Everything's much calmer, quieter and cleaner. It's also enabled us to change rooms at the Mercure & life has improved as a result! Instead of a window looking onto a blank wall 6 feet away, we now have the 'rear window' type view in the photo with a favela (which has its own lift access) on the hill behind. And we don't need to have the light on in the room during the daytime...our first week here certainly focussed my mind on what my (our?) priorities are for our longer term accommodation.
Talking of accommodation, we've fixed for someone to show me 5 properties tomorrow afternoon. If we draw a blank on all of those, then we'll be in an apart-hotel as temporary accommodation again on our return to Rio in mid-March.
This weekend we've spent more time on the beach (in anticipation of our next few weekends in colder climes!) which still gets pretty packed but nothing like it did during carnival when there often wasn't space to put down a towel - despite the fact it's a huge beach.
My parents would have loved the beaches here. Hughie for the extreme heat & the cool sea & mother for the people-watching and the fact that there are so many ladies, considerably larger than she was and often not much younger, proudly sunning themselves in bikinis. I'm beginning to feel a bit of a prude in my one-piece.
Brazilians go down "en famille" or with a group of friends in the morning, practically sit on top of eachother (or us) & drink, eat, chat/shout, splash around in the water until evening. The beach is covered in red umbrellas but many brazilians sit out in the full
force of the sun for most of the day. Interestingly though, whatever their skin colour or however tanned they are, they're very assiduous about applying suntan cream & some of them go through elaborate spraying/painting
rituals.
Patrick had a couple of productive days at BG once Carnival finished last
week and we met up on fri evening with a BG colleague & his wife who I hope I'll be seeing more of. I'd spent most of Friday with a group of women from the International Club here so my social life is looking up!
I went round the weekly local craft fair today while Patrick found a pub to watch Liverpool play Cardiff in the cup - nothing changes!