Aiko and I were able to attend the opening day celebration for Carnival in Sao Paulo. The tickets were pricey, around $R140 each, though we got them from a scalper so we actually paid $R170 each which included delivery price. Tickets for Carnival go fast so if you want to see the schools march down I would recommend hesitating. Since we didn’t make it back to Rio de Janeiro for Carnival we decided that we would splurge and attend the ceremony.

This was an amazing site to see, and if you like to pictures I recommend that you go to my Smugmug gallery and view all of my photos. Though, be warned that this is carnival and some photos may not be exactly safe for work (NSFW). I inserted the gallery, via thumbnails below, so if you would like to view the photos within this post just click on the slideshow gallery at the bottom of this post.

The  school in attendance were Tatuape, Rosas de Ouro, Mancha Verde, Vai-Vai, X9 Paulistana, Dragoes da Real, and Aguia de Ouro.  The first school kicked off at midnight and wave after wave of people poured by for over an hour, and that was only the first school. All in all, the whole production lasted about 8 hours, not including the 2 hours we showed up early to make sure we had seats for our group. However, with the on and off rain it was pretty quiet at first then surged with people for the first 3 hours then slowly faded away again.

Don’t forget to check out the other Carnival Photos on Smugmug

If you are like me you like a bit of history and find museums and ancient ruins fascinating, then Confeitaria Colombo is the place to visit. While Rio de Janeiro doesn’t have any ancient ruins it does have some very old buildings. If you walk around Central or Lapa you can see some of these buildings but they are often dilapidated, boarded up, or in some cases just the outer wall remaining. However, you do have an opportunity to see what Rio looked like at the beginning of the 1900’s.

If you are spending any time in Brazil, or follow Brazilian soap operas (which many Brazilians do), you will see a show called Lado a Lado, which takes place during the early 1900’s period of Rio de Janeiro. They start off and finish the show with pictures of Rio before it transformed into the megalopolis it is today. (more…)

As we count down till our RTW adventure I recall the many happy weekends I spent in Buzios, Brazil. Buzios is a small town that is located about two hours north of Rio de Janeiro. This small peninsula is surrounded by beautiful beaches and a great, quaint small downtown. (more…)

I can’t help but day dream about the start of our round the world (RTW) adventure that is only 130 days away. So, I decided to share some photos from 2008 when I visited the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro. (more…)

This past weekend I took advantage of one of my own tips, and found a cheap flight to Newark, NJ to visit my sister and brother-in-law and their adorable son, whom I met for the first time.  While there we were able to do some touristy things. To be honest I only wanted to go to NJ so that my wife could finally meet her nephew and didn’t care if I had the opportunity to see NYC, my sister-in-law had other plans for us and so the sight seeing began. (more…)