Hello Everybody!

What a busy couple of days we have had, our feet are aching from running for buses to get us all over Rio. So what have we been up to?

Monday our main mission was to find our hostel in the Santa Teresa neighbourhood of Rio. The hostel is a beautiful old colonial portuguese/french townhouse and because we are here out of tourist season we have got it to ourselves! When we got here we celebrated with a few beers, which even Sarah likes and then headed for a wander around the Central area of Rio. We saw some of the main sites including the ultramodern Catedral Metropolitana and the beautiful old theatre based on the opera house in Paris. As we wandered around we felt as if we could be in any European city, that must be the portuguese influences. Then monday night jet lag set in and an early night was called for!

Yesterday we went to the Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, Andrew was disappointed that the only brazillian babes in bikinis would soon be collecting theirpensions!! The bikinis are exactly as you would imagine though - skimpy! We then headed up?to the Sugar Loaf. Two cables car take you up to it. The first to Morro da Urca at 215m and then the second to the Sugar Loaf or Baia de Guanabara at 396m! The veiws were spectacular and we stayed there to see a great sunset and Rio lit up at night.

Today we went to see Christ the Redeemer on top of Corcovado which is 710m high. You get a cog train up to the top. Again the veiws were awesome and JC was even bigger than we expected - he is HUGE!! We then caught a bus to the Jardim Botanico for a relaxing stroll amongst the trees and monkeys! Unfortunately we got off the bus about a mile too soon and therefore our walk was longer than expected!!

Tomorrow night we are going to see a football match at the maracana so as you can imagine Andrew is very excited especially as it is a Rio derby match and Romario with over 1000 career goals will be playing at the age of 40+.

Ciao for now

S&A xxx (like C&A but different!! - and by the way C&A are a big store over here still for those of you that are interested!)