February 14 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

February 12 and 13, 2017 – At Sea sailing to Rio de Janeiro
The sail up the Atlantic has been fairly rough. There are crackers and green apples out on the Front Office counter for people who need them. I put on a seasickness patch a few days ago and it is working for me.
On the ship Valentines Day was celebrated on the 13th because we are overnighting in Rio tomorrow. There were hearts and other decorations every where I looked.
February 14, 2017
When I woke up at 6am, the ship was already docking. I had hoped to take pictures while we sailed in but I missed it.
Linda and I met our guide, Rodrigo, shortly after 9am. He had a driver, Miguel, to get us from place to place. The first stop was the train station to go up to Corcovado to see the Christ the Redeemer statue. Rodrigo told me when there were good photo opportunities as we rode the train. It was very crowded when we got to the top. Some people were lying on the walkway to take pictures. We had to step over them. The view of the city from up there was spectacular. Rodrigo pointed out what we were seeing. We spent an hour at the top.
We took the train down and Miguel drove us to a restaurant for lunch. We ordered 3 starters to share because Rodrigo said the portions were big. The best was the house specialty which was croquettes filled with feiojada which is a pork stew. After lunch we went to the Botanical Garden and the School of Visual Arts. The school building is an old building that was once the home of a very rich family. The Botanical Garden is populated with many trees from around the world that the Portuguese king had brought to Rio. There are monkeys that live in the trees. One threw things at us.
After walking through the gardens, we headed toward Sugarloaf. Rodrigo was worried it might rain since a large black cloud had appeared. To get to the top, you take 2 cable cars. We were lucky and it didn’t rain. We had another spectacular view with Copacabana beach in one direction and Christ the Redeemer in the other direction. There was a small neighborhood that we could see near one of the fortresses. After we got down from the mountain, Miguel drove us through this neighborhood. By this time it was 6pm so I told Ricardo that we wanted to see the Selaron stairs and then go back to the ship. Originally we were going to stay out to get shots of sunset but we were so tired we decided to skip it. The Selaron stairs are tiled. They were done by one man. There is no easy way to describe them but I could easily spend many hours looking at them.
We got back to the ship at 6:45pm and arranged to meet Rodrigo at 9am tomorrow.