Into the City

6 June 2022

Today will be a LONG day of walking. I got up and made my way to the General Osorio metro station to figure out how to get a metro card...which I don't really figure out. I only figure out how to get a single ride ticket, so I get a few of those and go to the Cinelandia station which was near our starting point for the walking tour. I found the tour guide in front of the Teatro Municipal as told, and Gabby told me where the bathrooms were, so I hit that up.

There were three others on the tour--all of whom live in Germany, but speak English. They all bond immediately...not with me.

City Council building

center of Cinelandia square

Cinelandia square

National Library

The Cinelandia area was originally intended to be a hub of theatre/film...but only one cinema house is left. Also saw the City Council building on the square and the National Library, which is beautiful inside.

tiled sidewalks EVERYWHERE

Cristo in the distance

From there, we went to the Santa Teresa tram station where the cable cars they eventually sold to San Francisco are used to get up into the neighborhood. Since we had all already seen the Metropolitan Cathedral, we agreed to skip it...but she also skipped the Lapa Arches and Selaron Steps--I was kinda pissed when I realized this later.

Then we went to square number two--Carioca Square. It actually used to be a lagoon, but they siphoned all the water out and into the bay--and also leveled some tall hills to create the area where the San Francisco church is now. We also walked through a market and saw drawings of what the area used to look like.

Selaron painting inside train station

he put himself in the paintings

San Francisco church and Carioca Square

From there we headed to the Confeiteria Colombo--a famous bakery/buffet restaurant founded in 1894. I had a puff pastry and Coke Zero before we moved on.

balconies very expensive, only rich had them

The rich people used to live in this area, then moved, then came back and forced the former slaves/poor people up into the hills, which became favelas. You could tell how rich someone was based on whether or not they had the decorative balcony on their home.

Next, we headed to the original Metropolitan church (Candelaria) which has a very fancy interior. This is located on a square called XV Square (named after the 15th of September when they became independent from Portugal). Brasil is the only country in the Americas where royalty actually lived--the King and Queen of Portugal came here to escape Napoleon and lived here for some time.

King and Queen lived here

Saw a VLT station nearby, so tried to get a Mais card (metro card) again. No bueno. While the rest of my tour group was making plans together, I stood by awkwardly.

After some research, I discover that the Mais card machines do not take foreign credit cards...only cash, so I'll try again tomorrow. I took the metro to the Botafogo station and found the Hocus Pocus brewery and had a decent lunch--fried olives and chicken with broccoli cream sauce, roasted pumpkin, and something called "crispy bacon bread" which looked like crumbled stale bread with pieces of bacon in it. I tried their Orange Sunshine blond ale that was pretty good. While walking there I found a Claro store (local phone) but they told me the only place that sold SIM with just a passport was at Rio Sul mall.

Hocus Pocus had wifi, so I looked it up and it was a 12 minute walk away. I went there and (no surprise), they also did not sell them. Nor did the Vivo store. Walked all the way back to the Botafogo station and went home. I changed and went to sit on the beach for a bit. Tired and sore, and more walking to come tomorrow.

inside of a metro station

sunset in Copacabana

kids practicing beach volleyball