For quite some months now we have been trying to do new things, enjoy the entertainment, museums and restaurants outside our immediate city streets. On August 18, I wrote about how to find out what is going on ‘around Rio’. (Look through the archives listed to the left) On August 31 and September 28 the blog was about the Municipal Theater programs and visiting Santa Teresa respectively.
This weekend we continued our quest of knowing the REAL city of Rio. On Friday we joined the low-keyed recovering locals strolling on the sea wall, just watching the people watching the sea. We sat for a time at one of the kiosks, drinking water and agua de coco, (coconut water) enjoying the last of the daylight and watching the cleanup crews clearing the beach of chairs and umbrellas. This is a top notch activity.
On Saturday we made reservations to watch a samba band at the Teatro Odisseia in Lapa. Camillo made a lot of effort to make this reservation. The Internet and the brochure we had showed the show starting at 9:00 (we verified this later) our reservation for a table just off the stage was for 8:30. At 8:30 / at 9:00 even at 9:15 the theater was still locked up tight. When the doors finally opened, no one could figure out our reservation times – the show started at MIDNIGHT! THIS is so (!) Brazilian.
Instead of just sitting inside this theater listening to a DJ play loud music until midnight, we decided to walk the streets of Lapa and to have a beer at the famous Bar and Botequim, Manoel & Juoquim in the Praça João Pessoa, then we would go back to see the show….. 11:00 we were once again outside the theater - the line now stretched across two blocks…. No way, we marked this off as a learning experience and caught a taxi home. Because we are trying these new places with a spirit of adventure we all had a great time. Moral - do not ask for a reservation, do not just believe the printed material ask a native how it works, and do not go with a preconceived, set idea of how the evening will turn out.
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