Real: Pronounced Hay-Ice

Hola amigos! Sorry about the delay in the Rio blog, let's be real, we loved Rio so much that we just didn't have time for internet really. But I will tell you that I'm writing to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina (even though I don't want to mix blog posts and getcha confused), and I just have to tell you something because I want to shout it from the rooftops, I just ate dulce de leche on my delicious slice of soft baguette for breakfast...DULCE DE LECHE ON BREAD FOR BREAKFAST. Buenos Aires is apparently known for their dulce de leche, so sue me if I eat it everyday for every meal until Sunday, because after this breakfast I will be doing that...jealous? I would be too, it's alright to be jealous. Trader Joe's (TJ's) has some pretty good dulce de leche though so now if you're craving it, I'd recommend going out and getting some and putting it on TJ's vanilla ice cream...oh damn now I'm jealous.

Moving on to Rio though...enough about dulce de leche...for now. Are you wondering about the title of this blog? Well, to start you need to know that the money they use in Brasil is called the Real, this is pronounced "Hay-Ice", I am not kidding, this is a fact. WHAT. I know, it's the weirdest thing ever. More on Portuguese to come.

Rio, oh geez le sigh. It's incredible and beautiful and will take your breath away with its magic. You fly over it and you just can't believe it's real life. There are these huge green mound hills that are everywhere and are more beautiful than any picture you can ever take and beaches that are the whitest sand and bluest water with huge waves and it's just unreal. We stayed at a great hostel! We've been nailing our hostels so far, all of them have been nice (there have been 5 total now so that's kind of a lot to nail!) But this time we stayed in a dorm, bleh. Rio's expensive so we bit the bullet and old school, bunk bed style, slept in a room with all men. Talk about bleh haha just kidding kind of. Anyway, it wasn't that bad, I exaggerate. And I digress.

We went to the beach a couple of days here, we chose Ipanema both days because we fell in love with the beach there. Copacabana is great, I mean everyone's heard of it blah blah, but Ipanema had incredibly huge waves (we're talking 6 footers here, which may not seem big to you, but like to swim in those, it's pretty hardcore alright?) and it was also less crowded so it was more enjoyable. It's neat, what you do is you go to a guy on the beach who has chairs and umbrellas and you rent them for 10 USD. It's such a great deal! So we made friends with the guy who rented them to us and went back to him the second day. He even asked us to come back a third day, but we were pretty sunburnt let's be honest, so we had to restrict our beach time. Anyway so Eric almost killed me in a wave on the second day, but luckily I made it. Rude. It's hilarious though, you hang out on the beach and all these guys come by with various food and drink items and just yell it, like you're at a freaking baseball game or something. The second day we got adventurous and bought these things called "Globos", which we still aren't sure what they are, but think chips and funions, but without much flavor? Idk. Our favorite was this guy that would come by and to get people's attention he'd just yell "WOAH!" and then say whatever he was selling. It was a had to be there kinda thing, but still hilarious. Also they were all selling this "acai" pronounced, "ah-sai-ee" and so our new fun thing was to walk around and whenever we saw an "acai" sign we'd say it like the guys on the beach. Okay you probably had to be there to understand where those last two stories were going, sorry...I'm not sorry...lo siento no lo siento.

In other news, we did two major touristy things, the first went really well, the second went horribly, but you win some, you lose some. The first was that we took the tram up to the top of Sugarloaf mountain (check it out on google if you're not sure what that is, it's one of those green hill mounds I was describing earlier), it has the MOST INCREDIBLE VIEW EVER. Seriously, it's amazing. After a full day at the beach we popped over to watch the sunset at Sugarloaf. Seriously, we nailed that. We caught it at literally the most perfect time, sure we ran some people over running to get from the smaller mountain to the second tram to get to the tip top of Sugarloaf, but whatever details...we were excited okay? We get kinda pushy when we're excited. But Sugarloaf was gorgeous. We got to see the Christ the Redeemer statue from it and it was just chilling up there looking all elegant and huge and then we saw it get lit up and then saw all the city lights coming out and it was just a wonderful thing to do, highly recommend if you're ever in Rio.

The second touristy thing we did was go to the Christ the Redeemer (Corcovada). So here's what happened. We decided to go our last day because what an epic way to end our time in Rio, right? WRONG. We went and what happened? The computers were down, the internet? We're still unsure, no one really speaks English and neither of us really speak Portuguese so we're still not exactly sure what was happening. Side note: Portuguese is crazy! They pronounce everything so ridiculously that it is in fact, not AT ALL like Spanish. Although when reading it, it looks a lot like Spanish, but good luck understanding anything anyone is saying ever. But thank goodness we're back to Spanish land. ANYWAY back to the story.. They told us to go buy them online, so we go to an internet cafe to do so and then find out you can't buy the same day? Then they tell us it's sold out? Seriously, it was a mess. So then we go to these sketchy ladies (once again doing one of those things everyone tells you not to, but whatever we're still alive to tell the story) who were selling private van tickets up there. We're like well geez I mean we leave tomorrow, we have to go somehow, so we do it! We buy the tickets and take a sketchy van (I'm sorry, we took 6 SEPARATE VANS, seriously we got transferred in and out of vans it was silly) up to the top. I mean whatever, we got to the top, but we were pretty disappointed because the train that takes you up there (the sold out deal) seemed pretty awesome, whatever we're not still upset about it or anything... Anyway, note to self: buy tickets ahead of time. But then we get there and it's cloudy and foggy and YOU CANNOT EVEN SEE JESUS. Literally, picture everyone up there sitting on the platform deal around Christ the Redeemer statue and the fog is clouding him so hard that you can barely even tell he's there, and then whenever the clouds clear for even just a minute, everyone cheers. It's the funniest thing ever. It actually didn't turn out so bad though because that was such a silly experience. So we got some really cloudy, occasionally clear, pictures of the statue and us in front of it. Talk about timing, sheesh. So you know, you win some, you lose some. We still had a blast, and since Sugarloaf was so awesome, we weren't too heartbroken about it.

Let's see what else, on my birthday it was gross weather (nailed it) so we wandered around the Centro, it's super old and historical and crazy. There are these markets where they sell all these obviously illegal or stolen or fake goods like New York, but you don't have to pack it all up in a second, the police couldn't care less. And there are just these insanely old churches that are gorgeous and you can go inside, and then Eric's favorite church, this dome-like structure, he actually hated it, it's a pretty ugly building and he loves old churches so I think he was disappointed that it was so ugly. Let's be real, it looked like a weird prison from outside, but gorgeous stained glass on the inside! We also walked around this amazing Lagoon one day, think Greenlake, but tropical and bigger. There were even swan boats you could ride around on, we didn't do that don't worry. We also went to Rio's botanical gardens, which are HUGE and gorgeous and tropical and Amazon rainforest-esque. Also, for my birthday Eric surprised me with two nights in a hotel in Copacabana! The hotel was great and the showers were HOT. I just lived in that shower, not actually, but basically. It was such a wonderful birthday present and such a relief to get away from the bunkbeds for a couple nights. What I'm saying is, Eric is the best guy ever and I'm just a lucky lady!

The best was our last night. We had been having a lot of bland food because we're really struggling with being vegetarians here, all people eat is meat I swear. So we'd been just cooking pasta etc. Actually one day we saw all these people eating these empanada looking treats (and I LOVE empanadas, OMGOSH) and I was just like, Eric let's just go eat that, throw caution to the wind, who cares if we get sick!? So we ate one with cheese and it was quite delightful! And bonus! We didn't get sick, phew, street food will not kill us! Anyway, so our last night we went to this amazing restaurant that was basically a treehouse, it was the most beautiful restaurant I have ever been to, we sat outside on these awesome old wood tables among these gorgeous trees, we felt like we were transported to the Amazon rainforest. We ate the most amazing dinner ever, which completely made up for the pretty terrible birthday dinner I had, so this became my birthday dinner instead. We ate Tilapia and tropical fish with amazing Amazonian spices and had fried bananas with chocolate sauce and ice cream for dessert and drank these incredible tropical fruit mixed drinks. Oh man, I will forever dream of that meal. Plus we got a gorgeous view of the city. What a way to end our trip, that's for sure.

Okay this is getting long, I realize that, but seriously we're in love with Rio. I'm already planning our return trip for the 2016 Olympics. Who's coming? We have a great hostel to stay at. We made friends with all the people who worked there (Perez was our fave, aw Perez, he was so sweet and great) so let's do it people! But bring lots of bug spray because for real, I have the most bugbites ever and I'm basically itching my skin off and I couldn't sleep one night because I was convinced I heard a mosquito flying around my head so I obviously hid under my covers until I was like sweating because it's really hot and humid. It was brutal. Eric's better with his, he has more self control than I do when it comes to itching bugbites. Anyway, oh also Futbol is huge there, like people are not exaggerating. The city stops when there's a futbol game on TV and everyone just watches on the streets. Also, people drink a ton in Rio. And they do this neat thing where you get a really large beer and then you get little glasses so it's like a pitcher kind of, but in a beer bottle and you just all share around the table, it's really great. Anyway, we miss Rio already, but we are so excited to start exploring Buenos Aires today. I absolutely love Evita the musical so today I'm on a hunt for Eva Peron's grave and the famous balcony that she gave speeches from. So enough of this, sorry it got so long and rambly...we're off to explore the "Paris" of South America, all we're going to eat is dulce de leche and all we're going to drink is wine! Just kidding, kinda of. And now to end, here's a picture of us at the top of Sugarloaf mountain at the sunset!

Ciao!

Mandi & Eric

Ps. I'd like to dedicate this blog to the amazing, the incredible, the beautiful, and the woman with the most perfect hair Katie O'Brien, my mentor and best boss ever from admissions. This blog is to Katie and her FIANCE Ben :) I am so freaking happy for you two I could die. I also shamelessly just watched your proposal video and majorly teared up. YOU NAILED IT BEN! Weeeeeeeeeeee! So happy!