Carnival 2009 - Day ONE (Rio de Janeiro)

Hi fellow blog “followers”,

The weather in Rio is one of the many mysteries Brazil has provided so far. Today is the first official day of Carnival and of all days it’s cloudy. Every single day last week was gorgeous, sunny and what felt like continuous breeze all day long. But unlike any other time of year where the weather determines your plans for the day, come rain or shine everyone’s out during Carnival.

I have been partying up like a rock star this entire week, getting an average of 3-4hrs of sleep. Volunteering during the day and hanging out in Ipanema at night! Last night was no exception, I got in at 7am and today I got up around 11am. Instead of immediately heading out to the beach, I decided to bum around and blog until 4’ish pm. I am very tired and want to save my energy for what I think will be the event of a lifetime, Carnival parade!

My coworker’s parents are feeling a lil under the weather and I got to buy their tickets. So the way things work with parades are as follows: Saturday, first day of Carnival, the 2nd tier samba schools get to perform and show off what they got. As for location, there’s a big avenue (aka 5th ave parades in NYC) near downtown where all this takes place. Sunday and Monday night, the top tier samba schools get to compete. Tuesday night, the finalists get to perform and the winner is announced on Wednesday (and the winner gets to perform on Saturday all by themselves). All been said, I got tickets for Sunday night which starts around 8pm and ends around 4a.m. Now you see why I’m trying (and I use the term loosely-teehee) to take it easy today.

But alas, nothing in Rio goes as planned so who knows what party/trouble I’ll get myself into tonight. For example, my plans Friday night were to meet friends at local pre-party bar and head to Galeria (local bar/club). What had happened was….apparently the local bar was part of a block party, where it was nearly impossible to find anyone in the crowd. Luckily the bar had a cover and was not packed, it also had a table with direct view of the block party so I snatched it, opened up a tab and began recruiting friends. Regarding tab, it is just so cheap here, we had lord knows how many caipirihnas and total tab was less than US$20 (Hollerrr).

My plans Saturday night were to take it easy but what happened was….I met Orlando in Ipanema for some beach time and ended up at a bloco (block party). A bloco is basically a poor man’s version of a carnival parade. It has a float or 2 and consists of people joining in from streets. Kind of hard to explain this so here’s a video! Anyways, after the bloco, we ate dinner at my favorite restaurant, Felice and later went to our pre-party bar where it was utter chaos. Needless to say, I didn’t get home til around 6am. RIO DE JANEIRO, I LOVE THIS CITY!

Stay tuned for video/pics posting from Sunday’s parade, I JUST CAN’T WAIT!!!