Sunday dawned bright, hot and sunny – perfect weather befitting our idea of what Rio should be. It was also amazing quiet – what had been a party zone the night before, was now a deserted streetscape. Despite this being the official start of our South American adventure, all of us simply wanted to take it easy – my mad rush to London, and the emotional impact of permanently leaving the UK for Phil and Kim (after living there for two years) meant that we decided today would be best sent riding a local bus to a shopping mall quite a way down the coast.
In line with the safety warnings that we had received the night before, we took no cameras and wore our money pouches. It took us a while to work out how the busses operated – they are divided in two with a gate …. (write more here)
The beach! sun, sand surf
Shopping complex – Maccas
Grocery shopping – havianas
We were most disappointed that we hadn’t brought our cameras along – we’d seen some amazing sights and we hadn’t felt unsafe the entire day. We vowed to come back something in the next couple of days to get the shots we were after.
So today marks the real start of our South American journey – for today we will actually be on the continent. Phil and Kim meet me at Earl’s Court where we catch the tube to Heathrow for our British Airways flight to Rio. The only two things I remember about the flight was the food (appalling) and watching The Proposal (actually quite good – that, or I was really bored).
We arrived in Rio at about 9pm and tried to catch a taxi which proved to be a little tricky given we spoke zero Portuguese! The best we could do was point to a written address and hope the taxi driver knew where he was going. As it turned out, the taxi driver didn’t quite know where he was going and ended up getting slightly lost and taking us down some side streets which looked rather seedy. With the smattering of broken English that the driver could speak, and with some hand signals, he managed to convey that we should never walk at night through the CBD as it was extremely dangerous for tourists. What a great introduction to Rio!
We eventually arrived at our hostel which was located right at the base of the Lapa Arches. For those that don’t know Rio, this is party central on the weekends and the place was packed with people. We hurried into our hostel, not entirely feeling safe and were shown to our room. Although we had booked a room for ourselves, for this night, the owner had asked if we would mind two English girls sharing our room as he didn’t want to put them in a room full of guys. It was fine with us and we didn’t have much to do with them in the short while that we shared the room. One thing they did warn us about was about the dangers of Rio.
Apparently the night before, a taxi had been driving past the hostel when a bunch of street kids ran out in front of the car and pretended to be hit. When the taxi driver got out to investigate, the kids swarmed the taxi, stole all the belongings of the tourists in the car, pushed them out and locked the car behind them. The stranded taxi ended up blocking traffic for the better part of an hour. Both the UK girls and the hostel owner warned us not to have any valuables on us when we wandered around Rio. Great.
Hopefully the next day would be more positive.
Tags: British Airways, danger, Lapa, Lapa Arches, London, Portuguese, Rio, Rio de Janeiro, taxi
Friday – London
I woke up on Friday feeling refreshed and keen to accomplish more than I did the day before. I walked out to Earl’s Court Road and stood on the street corner enjoying the everyday ‘London’ scene that was unfolding before me – narrow streets, typical ‘English’ architecture, double decker buses and the black taxis trundling past me.
But I couldn’t dawdle as I had to find a replacement netbook charger as it would be virtually impossible to find one in South America. Thanks to a recommendation from one of Kim and Phil’s friends, Jono, I took the tube to central London and visited a Maplin store somewhere near Oxford street. Thankfully they had a universal adapted in stock which was a huge relief.
Walking back along Oxford Street it then occurred me that I had forgotten to bring my spare pair of glasses as well as my hard spectacle case – gah! Well there wasn’t anything I could do about getting a replacement pair of glasses, but I could buy a new case which I did at some store next to the London Apple store.
I spent most of Friday afternoon in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park – they are next to each other – relaxing and taking photos. London had turned on some beautiful weather (sunny and 22 deg C) and it was a nice change of pace from work just to wander through the parks without agenda or time constraints. I also visited the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain which I thought was a beautifully sculpted fountain – the best I could describe it was if someone had laid a ribbon in a circular loop and then allowed water to run through it.
Late on Friday afternoon I headed back to the Drury Lane theatre (where Oliver! was being performed) for a fascinating behind the scenes tour of the theatre.
On Friday night I caught up with Phil, Kim and Jono for a yum cha dinner at Yauatcha. Was great to catch up with them having not seen them for 18 months. Had Hagen Daas icecream for the first time in a decade (yum!) and then it was back to my hotel for sleep.
(View photos in Flickr)
Tags: Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, London, tube
Thursday – In transit, London
The flight from Melbourne to London felt a lot longer that the London to Melbourne flight I took in 2005 and it didn’t get off to a good start when, as I pulled out my netbook to go through security, I realised that I had left my netbook charger at home. Somehow I don’t think my netbook battery will last 3 months without a charge … damn!
Got on the plane at Sydney and prayed that my normal run of bad seat neighbours would not hold … but (initially) it appeared that nothing had changed. My neighbour was a half-caucasian Mr Miyagi look alike who took of his shoes as soon as he sat down and … omg what has died …
Thankfully, he was a pretty chatty person and we spent the next 7 hours to Singapore chatting on and off which made that aspect of the flight go much faster.
Singapore was a short 30 minute stopover before I commenced the long 17 hr flight to Frankfurt – with a new seat neighbour (who thankfully didn’t have smelly feet, but also didn’t speak much either).
Qantas airline meals seem to be better than I remember – but maybe it was boredom making the food taste better.
Frankfurt Airport was boring – I arrived at 5am and everything was closed. It’s also has an appalling lack of signage – I spent a good 30 mins trying to find my gate.
Frankfurt To Heathrow was on a British Airways flight. Having just come off a Qantas flight, it surprised me how dowdy BA planes are. They were using the same model of plane (737?) that Qantas flies between Melbourne and Adelaide, yet the furnishings are cheap and run down. Not a good impression.
Slept through most of that leg and arrived at Heathrow 15 minutes early. Thankfully, the 30 hours or so of flying was over. Got a three day off peak Tube ticket, caught the Picadilly Line to Earls Court, and I was ready to visit London for the third time in my life.
I spent of the afternoon trying to work out why my NAB debit card wasn’t working and trying to source a replacement for my netbook charger. By late afternoon I was fed up with my lack of success on either matter and decided to head to Hyde Park and at least get something out of the day. Even here I had no success as I came to the realisation that Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens is quite large and there was no way I could do it justice in the time remaining. So vowing to come back tomorrow, I headed back to Earl’s Court to grab some dinner before heading off to see Oliver! (the musical).
Oliver! was being performed at the majestic Royal Drury Lane theatre next to Covent Gardens. A very beautiful theatre, the Oliver! set made great use of forced perspective to make the stage appear much bigger than it was. Sadly, I kept dozing off throughout the performance. It wasn’t jetlag, but merely the 30 hours of flying coupled with a full day of walking around London that caught up with me. I did wake up during the musical numbers (since they were loud) and since I already knew the storyline, I felt I still managed to experience all the important bits 
Tags: British Airways, Drury Lane theatre, Earl's Court, Frankfurt, Hyde Park, London, musical, Oliver!, Picadilly Line, Qantas, Singapore, tube
So much for leaving early on my last day of work for three months! Madly rushed through the day finishing up performance reviews for my team, handing over all my work (it turns out I actually do quite a bit of work – who would have thought) and then rushed home, packed my bags in 10 minutes and dashed to make a flight to Adelaide (better visit the parents before I leave the country for such a long time).
It’s only the next morning (today) that it’s slowly starting to sink in that I’m on leave for t-h-r-e-e m-o-n-t-h-s! Still doesn’t quite feel like I’m on leave though – I guess that will occur sometime in the next few weeks.
So now I have a couple of days catching up with my parents in Adelaide, before I head back to Melbourne, finish packing and then fly out of Australia.
Tags: Adelaide, flight, long service leave, Melbourne, parents, work
