We made it! A very long and, quite sleepless for some, flight later and we arrived at the airport around 5:30am. We had a very scenic drive to our hotel,  despite the weather not looking great. We dropped off our bags and headed down to the beach.

It was a very gloomy day, no blue sky in sight. It was only around 8am but the beach was full of people working out. We set off walking along the front just taking in our surroundings, we walked a far distance before realising we’d pretty much walked the stretch of Copacabana Beach so we found a map and found a shopping center hopping to find something for breakfast. The first day was very slow, it ended up raining as we went out to find lunch and was admittedly not the greatest start to our time in South America.

Day two, completely makes up for the rainy and slow start. Again, we had decided to take a free walking tour of the Downtown and Lapa area. We conquered the metro and arrived in front of a very grand building - the Municipal Theatre. We were told much about the history of Rio before setting off, which we had actually heard a lot of from our tour in Lisbon as the beginnings of the two country’s were very strongly linked. We wandered through Cinelandîa, and reached the famous Escadari Selaron - amazing colourful tiled stairs created by Jorge Sélaron a Chilean artist as his contribution to Brazil. We visited the Lapa aqueduct which connected Santa Teresa to the downtown, and a rather unusual looking cathedral - Catedral Metropolitana (the cone looking building). Confeitaria Colombo was where we first tried traditional Brazilian food, a coxinha - delicious and a brigaderio - delicious. We spent the rest of the day at Museu do Amanhã (The museum of Tomorrow), a science museum looking at sustainability and the ecological world.

We knew Wednesday would be the best weather wise so we booked a tour for both Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf mountain in the hopes of the best views. After an early start our first stop was Christ the Redeemer, pretty breathtaking - but that could of been to do with the stairs we took to get to the top. The views were incredible and the statue itself was so impressive at 38 meters tall. We made a quick stop at Maracana Stadium and the selaron steps again only today was much much busier. We had lunch at a traditional Brazilian buffet restaurant before heading to Sugarloaf. It took two cable cars to reach the top of Sugarloaf mountain - the third cable cars in use in the world. This part of the day surpassed both our expectations, from every viewpoint there was a picture perfect view that didn’t seem quite real. We could see the whole city, Copacabana where we were staying, Downtown from the day before and much more - considering the vastness of the city this was truly remarkable. We ate dinner down at the beach again which concluded the day.

Thursday was much more relaxed, the weather was back to being cloudy so we wandered to Ipanema beach and spent most of the day there. We organised all our bags ready for the bus journey on Friday down to São Paulo. This journey was very easy and rather pleasant - the coaches are much comfier and roomier here.