Day 8 Rio de Janeiro

Today is Sunday and on Sundays only there is a big street market in Ipanema so we walked from our hotel in Copacabana along the beach to the market. It was quite big – lots of stalls with leather goods, jewelry, wooden stuff, T-shirts, clothes, etc. We bought a few things and then walked back. It’s a gorgeous walk because the coastline is spectacular. In the afternoon we took a tour of Corcovado (Christ Redeemer), old town, a stadium where the carnival takes place and Tijuca forest. We were lucky because the visibility was good at Christ and it wasn’t terribly crowded. The views were great. The Rio cathedral is a relatively new building that looks like a pyramid and is pretty ugly from the outside, but inside it’s quite beautiful. Like the carnival stadium, it was designed by Brazil's most famous architect Oscar Niemeyer who is still alive and 104 years old now. There were 12 people on our tour – from Argentina, Russia, Switzerland and Czech Republic. Luckily it was a disciplined group and we didn’t have to wait for anybody.