Rio

Our friends, Malcolm and Doreen, inspired us to explore Rio with them

Rio revealed many new sights: this is the elaborately presented chapel for naval officers.

... and here is an example of the mosaic pavement patterns that are a characteristic of Rio and Niteroi.

We went up to Santa Teresa on the tram which dates back to 1896! Called the "bonde" as it was financed by the issue of bonds.

Interesting buildings from early 20th century (the yellow cafe in 'Cinelandia')...

... and the late 20th century Petrobras building.

Some streets hark back to the 19th century...

... and here is how they look when you can see one century peeping out through an earlier one.

We all ate together in a favourite restaurant

... and here we are still looking well!

For the past fortnight, our friends from the UK, Malcolm and Doreen, have been staying with us. Malcolm said that he found our balcony the best observation point to see and photograph birds he could imagine - we think he took over 200 photos of the bird life here! They brought tea bags from England as this is a scarce commodity in Brazil!

We spent 3 days in one of our very favourite places, Paraty. We stayed in a beautiful pousada where all the chalets faced out to sea. Although every day was sunny, our first hour's experience saw a downpour with our friend's balacony going under water - so they were moved to another chalet. We all went out onto the water in Toninho's boat where idyllic swimming, pleasant relaxed eating, sunbathing, seeing unusual sealife and visiting strange caves were the highlights. As blogger will not let us download the Paraty photos at the moment, we'll publish them separately later.