Rio de Janeiro, part 2

 Rio was the last city in our tour.  We stayed at the Sheraton, right on Ipanema Beach (as in the famous song).

This was the view from our hotel room.

And if you looked across the road there were some of the infamous favelas, getting the same fabulous views as the luxury hotels. 

'We took a cable car ride to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain.

And were rewarded with this panoramic view of the city and beaches.

On our seventeen day trip we only had one day of rain and that was the day that we took a cog train up to the top of Corovado Peak to see Christ the Redeemer.  We were literally in the rain clouds, up that high and I didn't even attempt a picture.  This was taken from Sugar Loaf Mountain, zooming in as much as I could.  It was very impressive.  The figure has an arm span of 98 feet and is 130 feet tall, including the pedestal.  Go here to see some fabulous pictures.

This is inside the Cathedral of San Sebastian, so beautiful and so unusual.  These magnificent stained glass panels were on the four sides of the church and met at the top in a cross. 

The outside of the building looked more like an Aztec temple than a cathedral.  You couldn't get far enough away to get a good view, but this mirrored skyscraper across the street gave a pretty good reflection,

I must confess that I scanned a postcard to get this view.

I said I would tell you about the Samba.  We went to a show one night, very hard to get pictures, but suffice it to say that the tall statuesque women wore very little on their bodies, and a lot on their heads.

Near the end of the show, several costumes from Carnival were paraded around.  They were spectacular.  We only saw a few, but at the real Carnival there are supposedly thousands.

So my very succinct overview of my trip comes to an end.  I'm sure you realize that I only gave you a tiny glimpse at only some of the many things we saw and experienced.  It was a great trip and now we're thinking about "where next?".  Maybe South Africa, maybe.....

But for now I have to get back to my studio and Christmas preparations.

Be sure to click on any picture for a bigger view of all.