Needless to say, enjoy it I have. It's been a whirlwind of fun and I'll come back with more detail, but here's a quick recap.
The real signs that Carnaval was in full swing started to show up Thursday night. The usually (and relatively) quiet side streets of Rio started filling up with crowd barriers and street vendors. And, by street vendors I mean just about anyone who could drag a cooler full of water, soda and beer down the sidewalk was a full-fledged street vendor sitting side-by-side waiting for the crowds.
The crowds started to fill the street Thursday and Friday nights. But, it was really Saturday that the craziness broke out. We had made our evening trek to the gym and were walking home along the main street in Rio, Visconde de Piraja, when we came upon the Banda de Ipanema. You'll remember that Chris and I saw the Banda practice a few Saturdays ago. Tonight they were going all-out down the main drag... and had been doing so for at least 4 hours going about a block every 30 minutes or so. No one here was in a hurry to make this parade end quickly.
We joined right in with the crowd of people in costumes, the drummers, the singers and marched right along until we reached the block party at our street. It was here where we pushed our way through the huge street party that had gathered and made our way home.
Sunday night, I marched in the Carnaval Parade at the Sambadrome. Alan and Christiane were able to get a costume for me. I don't have the pictures of us yet... they're on Alan's camera... but the costume turned out to be the very same one I placed on an earlier blog post.
You can picture me in this... it's kind of an Asian/Indian theme... big baggy pants, huge feathers off the shoulders and an enormous hat/head dress thing. The seven of us were quite a site. But, marching through the Sambadrome stadium with thousands of people dancing and singing to the hundreds of drums beating was truly an experience.
Sunday we returned to the Sambadrome... this time as spectators. We arrived around 10:30. The first parade had kicked off around 9. Before I knew it, it was 4:00 am and two more Samba Schools were left to parade. Imagine 7 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades in a row... one after the other... for two nights. Absolutely amazing.
The good news for me is that I brought the camera out and got some really great shots. Here's a taste of what I'll finish loading up later.
Only 36 hours left in Rio. I'm headed to the beach.
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