27/4/09 It rained nearly all day today, plus most of Rio's attractions are closed on Mondays, so apart from a quick trip out to get a couple of interesting cakes and go to the supermarket, we just took it easy, went on the internet etc.

28/4/09 Today we walked into Centro for the first time, to see some of the historical sights and visit the National Fine Arts Museum. The first thing we did was try to find the museum, but we couldn't find it anywhere! The map really wasn't very good. En route, I had popped into the Ingreja Santa Luzia, the church of Saint Louise (I hadn't known there was a Saint Louise until then.) It was quite small and there was a service going on, and I stood out because everybody else was a local, so I only stayed for a couple of minutes to look around from my position at the entrance. It was similar to the Inglesia San Francisco in Santiago, in that there were models of saints in boxes and a small shrine of the Virgin Mary (though there weren't prayers etc. attached to it in this case) with people crossing themselves in front of it, but overall the church isn't as old, and although the decoration inside was quite ornate and beautiful, it was different to the San Francisco one. I took a quick photo, feeling a bit cheeky, and this drew a couple of stares from people, so I made a hasty exit.
After failing to find the museum, we decided to press on to Praça VI instead; due to Rio being Brazil's capital for over a century at one point, this is a square where lots of historical events occurred, like the announcement when slavery was abolished. It's surrounded by lots of historical buildings, though it also has a concrete overpass running over the middle. There were a couple of historical churches I had wanted to look round, but they closed at 2 and by the time we got to the square it was already 1.45, so I left those for another day, when I'd have time to look round them properly. Instead, I went into the Ingreja San Jose, also on the edge of the square, and this was different again to the San Francisco one and the Santa Luzia one; it was bigger, the ceiling was very high, and there were a couple of statues raised up at the front but not in boxes along the sides.
We walked across the square to have a closer look at the old classical rail station, and on the way we were ambushed by a clown, believe it or not, who before we could walk away launched into a speech and showed us photos of him working with children at a local hospice! Unfortunately he mostly spoke in Portuguese, but ending sentences with "do you understand?" in English. Confused, we just nodded and siad "yes..." each time. Eventually he wound down and held out his hand...I explained that we don't actually have any money and that we had come here today precisely because we wanted to do the things that are free. As we walked away, he swore at us, using the F word! That's a fine way to represent a charitable cause - if it wasn't all a con in the first place.
Musing on the surrealness of being ambushed by a swearing clown in Rio's historical centre, we walked back home along the edge of the harbour and Botafogo and Flamengo beaches. This took over an hour and we were knackered by the time we got back; we stopped at a supermarket near the hostel and bought a large drink before having an early dinner and going on the internet.

29/4/09 We didn't do much today apart from walk up to the top of a nearby hill to catch the view. We had been told that it was really good from there, but it was a bit of an anticlimax. There were lots of stray cats at the top, which Dave liked. They didn't look very ill treated, like the dogs in India, but some were very thin and there were too many of them to have been pets.

30/4/09 We spent a good portion of today at the Botanical Gardens, and it was amazing! It was founded in 1808 by the King of Portugal, who was in voluntary exile there having fled Europe to avoid Napoleon. One of the best things they have is a fantastic indoors orchid display, filled with hybrids and grafted ones as well as normal ones. Then there's the long rows of tall and stately palms, a mango tree retreat (the wrong season for the fruit unfortuantely), clumps of giant bamboo (think about 20 metres tall!), a cactus garden with weird and wonderful specimens on display, giant lilypads, insect-eating plants in a greenhouse (not Venus Flytraps, but lots of others that I hadn't heard of before), plants used for medicinal and eating purposes such as vanilla, lemongrass and aloe vera.... They had lots of other things fitted in too, such as a Japanese garden, statues, a big fountain, a series of small waterfalls, a turtle pond (Dave was particularly charmed with these, as they are one of his favourite animals) -even a hummingbird garden! Unfortunately we didn't see any hummingbirds in it, or any of the small monkeys which apparently live along one of the streams elsewhere in the gardens, but we saw more than enough other things to make up for it. What I liked was the way that everything is laid out so tastefully, so that although some bits are extremely different to others, they fit together as a whole very well. It's set against mountains covered in the original Atlantic Rainforest, some of the last in the world (it originally covered a lot of southern Brazilian but most of it was cleared after the European invasion), and it's just so green and pleasant, you can wander around for literally hours and stay entertained. We were there for three to four hours, and time really flew past!
To get to the Botanical Gardens, we walked out of Botafogo and into the Jardim Botanico area, to the edge of the lagoon. It's got the Ipanema and Leblon areas along one side, Corcovado mountain/ Cristo Redentor on another, and other mountains in sight over the others. There were a couple of rowing boats out on it, and I saw a white stork and what I though looked like cormorants but a little different.

1/5/09 We walked into Centro again today, once again to find the National Arts Museum. On the way, next to an on the paths next to the harbour and beaches there were lots of barbecue stands, other street vendors, joggers, cyclists, rollerbladers, families sitting around, guys walking around in tiny speedos and fishermen, and people on the beaches were playing volleyball. The barbecues smelled gorgeous, of cooked meat and shrimps, and for lunch we shared a beef skewer and a cheese skewer. The cheese is a bit like feta so it doesn't disintegrate when grilled. They were both delicious!
Unfortunately, when we arrived and had located the museum, we found that it was closed, and then we realised that May 1st is a holiday here; Labour Day. We had just passed what we thought was a protest, but a slightly strange one. A tiny stage had been set up with music coming out of loudspeakers, and it was flanked by lots of big banners with lots of Portuguese writing on. I didn't understand a lot of it, but I did work out enough of the words on one of them to know it involved the economic crisis. Haiti was also mentioned, on another one, but I didn't know what any of the rest of it said.
We knew every other place we wanted to go to would be closed, and most of the shops were closed too, so we were stuck for things to do. In the end we just walked to Praça VI, walked around for a bit and then walked all the way home again. At least it was all good exercise!