Carnaval – Sambodromo

Another “must do” on our list was to visit Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during Carnaval. The city and its suburbs are crawling with locals and foreigners. The buses are packed with people traveling from bloco to bloco (a bloco is a block party – some with just a few people and others with up to 2 million). The lines to buy subway passes can extend over half a kilometer and then you have to wait again to board the trains. We were told to avoid all the tourist hotspots until Wednesday because it would take a few extra hours just to purchase tickets.

We stayed in a beautiful apartment in the heart of Ipanema, right next door to Copacabana. We found this place on airbnb.com and we were not disappointed. Sandra, our host, was wonderful and her penthouse apartment was immaculate. You can expect to pay 3-4 times the regular rate during Carnaval – oh well, it was on our “must do” list!

Ipanema
Ipanema, alongside Copacabana is one of the places to be in Rio, especially amongst the chic. It’s a bit like being in Miami’s South Beach. There are great places for shopping, fine restaurants, and beautiful beaches, except they aren’t so beautiful during the week of Carnaval. Since the suburb is crawling with people partying, there is trash every where. The city is trying to keep a handle on the mess, but as soon the the streets and beaches are swept clean of beer cans and vodka bottles, the trash is back again! We headed out to a few of the bloco parties in the Ipanema / Copacabana area, where at times we were shoulder to shoulder with many hundreds of drunk people, including young, old, and very gay men making out in the streets. We later learned that the blocos in Ipanema were geared for them – little did we know! We weren’t deterred, it was actually great fun to people watch.

I started working on the Monday after we arrived. It was a bit of a shock to the system as I have to work from 11am-8pm for the first week. It wasn’t so bad on Monday as we needed the sleep after the Sambadromo parade the night before, but the rest of the week was not so nice. Saturday, Brazil moved the clocks back an hour so I was done at 7pm – still too late for my liking!

The owner of our apartment has gone out of her way to show us a great time. She’s taught us how to make proper Caipirinhas, she took Wayne to the beach in Copacabana to purchase fresh monk fish and then prepared a wonderful salad for us to eat. She also gave us details on which bloco parties to avoid.

Sambodromo
The best part of Carnaval was going to the Sambodromo for the Samba School parades. The Sambodromo is a permanent 700 meter long parade ground with seating for over 90,000 people. We had no idea what to expect and we were pleasantly surprised that all the drunk people from the bloco parties did not pay the hefty price to attend the parades. Each school has 80 minutes to complete their parade. They start around 9pm and continue until 5am the following morning. It’s beautiful, elaborate, loud, and completely insane. Everyone at the Sambodromo knows the words to the samba school songs and sing them with confidence. The parade and singing will give you goose bumps! We were in Section 11 (almost the cheap seats), where each schools drummers perform, but we found the views unobstructed and we had plenty of room to move around.

I found the rest of Carnaval to be a complete mess. I had no plans to get sloppy drunk in Brazil so going out watching this for 3 nights was too much! It’s an awesome atmosphere to be around so many people and I love to hear them sing their songs, but I was glad when Fat Tuesday came and went, and Wednesday rolled around and people started leaving the city. I never felt like we could see the beauty of Rio during Carnaval. Wednesday was also when our friends from Washington DC arrived so we looked forward to that.

February 20th 2013