We had a lie in this morning on those beautiful pillows!

We weren't planning to go and see anything today, we weren't feeling the botanical gardens, surprisingly Scott didn't want to go to that famous Brazilian football stadium and we were both a little scared to do a favela walking tour I think.

We walked a few blocks to 'kraft cafe' that Nikki and Jess recommended, Scott immediately found Vietnamese 'Pho' on the menu so it was an easy choice. I had goat cheese, avacado and poached egg on whole meal bread - delicious! The banana and kiwi smoothie was good too!

It was so hot again today, it was 30 degrees by 10am this morning. It's ridiculously hot! It's hard to pick your feet up off the floor.

We went in and out of all the lovely looking shops by the cafe. Turns out just up from our hotel is like the Oxford street of Rio! I wanted to buy everything and anything but resisted!

We dragged our feet through a few banks to try and change some dollars to riel to help tie us over for the airport and this afternoon. Turns out banks don't exchange any money here, coincidentally Scott knew this? I don't think he did personally he's just taking a wild guess. We walked in and out of the blocks to try and find some exchange place...

We gave up and went to ask the hotel, guess what! They exchange dollars to riel! It was also a better rate compared to the airport aswell! Typical!

We changed the money and I took everything up to the room except a couple of riels and the go pro because we were going to the beach and was told to never take anything to the beach because everyone always gets things nicked there - fills us full of confidence!

We had a coconut! Ah I was so excited, a fresh coconut on a Rio beach, lovely!

We shared a table and umbrella with an old guy from Rio, he spoke French because he lived there most of the time, he spoke a little English but not much.

I clocked two men eyeing up Scott's iPhone 7 whilst we were sat there, I could tell they were eyeing it up ready for if we sat down at the beach they could swipe it if we were both planning on going in the water. (which we weren't)

Then the old guy said that we need to be careful here and that it's dangerous for us, meaning that there are a lot of people wanting to pinch things. I told Scott they were eyeing up his phone and he immediately get unsafe because of what the guy had said aswell.

After our very surprisingly delicious fresh coconut milk straight from the coconut... we went back to the hotel to sit around the pool where we felt a little safer.

We chilled out here all day, had a reflective moment about the holiday! Haha.

We have had such a good time and met some lovely people, we can't believe it's our last day already! It's gone so blinking fast! And it still doesn't feel like Christmas! Perhaps because of the 38 degrees temperature for the 21st December!

We had a few beers and stared at the Christ of Redeemer, couldn't believe we were still here and seeing another wonder of the world. Watched the kids playing football in the favelas on the mountain, in so curious as to what goes on there and how it's all run. They're probably making mass amounts of drugs as we speak. It's crazy!

We went down to the room around 4.30pm, we were checking out in two hours time. Then calling an uber to take us to the airport. That would be plenty of time considering I couldn't bloody check in last night! The map says 30 minutes with the traffic.

We got our uber driver at 6.30pm, he took us the long way around. I could see the map on his phone and I was checking mine. Instead of getting straight on the freeway right behind our hotel he detoured through Copacabana beach and right the way around the coast. Well of course, Copacabana beach had traffic lights so it was taking a lot longer than expected to get through the traffic. The uber app and my google map was say it would take us one hour to get to the airport from where we were and it had already taken us 30 minutes to get through Copacabana, that's about 3km from our hotel.

So Beth being Beth starts to panic, because we hadn't checked in and I hate not doing that, just as precaution! Thinking that all the roads around the coast are going to have traffic lights and traffic so it's going to take forever! Our estimated arrival time would have been 7.20pm now it was 8.15pm.

Turns out though the driver had it under control, once we had passed the sugar loaf mountain area the by pass was quiet and had no traffic lights - result! I stopped sweating and panicking now because our estimated arrival time went down to 7.45pm. Much better! I stopped panicking as much then.

We arrived at the airport for 7.40pm, turns out just 10 minutes before check in opened! Phew. I managed to check in on the self service desks but the paper was all jammed so our boarding passes couldn't print... typical!

It took ages for us to check in, and there's always one that messes with their bags when they get to the check in desk rather than doing it in the queue...

These days you can pay a small fee and have your bag wrapped properly. But no, this old man brought his own cling fling roll himself and decided to wrap it whilst it was being weighed on the belt at check in. Everyone was gobsmacked that he was allowed to do it! I think he realised that it wasn't possible to wrap the entire bag so he wrapped about 30cm of the bag at the top... that did absolutely nothing! Funny to see what the bag comes out like when we arrive in London! Haha. Silly man.

Finally we got through to departures after about four different security points of showing our passports.

The airport was brand new but absolutely crap! There were no signs or information boards to say where there was any food places, all there was was a subway and a sushi bar just after duty-free. We thought there must be more places up by the gates because it said on the website it has al of these lovely restaurants. Well after about half an hour of walking miles around we ended up in the same spot because no, there actually wasn't any other restaurants or snack bars. How silly!

We were late boarding because the cabin crew left their hotel late and got stuck in traffic... unorganised! I don't think it helped that a few of them had stopped by duty free to buy something whilst on their way to the gate! Yes, I clocked them!

We finally took off at 11.10pm. It wasn't the best aircraft we had been on, the TVs were small and s***ty but hey, that's 1st world problems! No dramas.

We were both shattered, I think we both went straight to sleep! Let's hope for minimum turbulence going over the Atlantic.



Happy 90th Birthday Grandma!