Exploring markets, ruins, museums and a scary taxi ride in Rio!

We didn’t have any solid plans for today so decided to get the bus to Gloria and have a walk around.

We stumbled upon a very bustling Sunday market which had some of the craziest looking fruit I had seen, not to mention crabs and lobsters still alive strung to poles – so many sensations both for the eyes and nose! From there we finally found the Escadaria Selaron, which are a big set of stairs covered in amazingly painted ceramic tiles and art.

All the tiles were painted by Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón as “his tribute to the Brazilian people”. Jorge lived by the steps and slowly painted them all over the course of 20 years, constantly repairing and adding new tiles. Sadly he was found dead at the age of 65 near his house on the stairs, apparently with burns.

From the stairs we carried on walking up a pretty large hill.. by this point it was 30c and boy was the sweat flowing on both of us!

We eventually stumped across some ruins at the top of the hill named Parque das Ruínas. The view from here was incredible and a Brazilian band playing wind pipes, guitar and more created a real Rio buzz in the air. Although it seemed to be the local point for Brazilians to have photoshoots, the ruins were full of teenagers.. and even 1 pregnant lady all pulling very vain and pouty faces!

We had done all this without breakfast so had a quick snack at the cafe by the ruins and made our way to the museum that was right next door: Chácara do Céu. This museum mostly housed the private collection of Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya.

The collection that both Alis and I enjoyed the most were the works of Jean-Baptiste Debret both the incredible quality of paintings and deeper meanings – he seemed to sway slightly from the common views and gave interesting arguments towards slavery and culture as a whole.

We then had lunch in a very local feeling bistro – we were definitely the only non-Brazilians there but the meat was once again lovely!.. Annoyingly we continued down the road towards Santa Teresa and Alis saw the restaurant that had been highly recommended – Espirito Santa but alas, it was too late.. our bellies were full!

We were trying to work out what to do, but we were sort of in the middle of no where (at least not walkable) so we had the choice of trying to get a bus or taxi.. we found a friendly looking lady and so began a rather scary taxi ride home! At first we were even hesitant about getting our 2nd ever taxi in Rio (1st being the airport) as we’ve heard of taxi’s taking tourists for joy-rides to rack the metre up. We managed to tell her our address in broken Portuguese/English and so began the ride… firstly, there were seatbelts, but no where to plug them in?!.. (Yes we checked down the seats, they were gone!), and then came the downhill descent on cobble stones – this woman must have been a rally driver in a previous life. It was definitely an experience.

We’ve now just been chilling in our apartment arranging the next adventures! We’ve booked to go hang gliding over Rio tomorrow morning (as long as there’s wind — fingers crossed) and then tomorrow evening we’re leaving Rio and headed for Paraty – which looks a lovely tropical seaside city!