Rio Carnival

Rio carnival….where to begin?!

In some ways Rio was calmer than I expected. The carnival itself is quite spread out, with localized blocos (street parties) and then the sambadromo parades. When we arrived on Saturday we had a little wander through Copacabana and saw lots of stalls selling costume accessories and bits, and some people in various stages of fancy dress. We had tickets to the sambadromo that night so decided to dress up Hawaiian style (nice and easy!). The city was busy, and parts of it did feel a lil rammed (the beach especially), but it was never crazy or felt like there were people pushing everywhere.

The sambadrome was huge. Its capacity is 75,000, and the runway is half a mile long! The parades started at 9, and each lasted about an hour (they had to be between 60 and 100 minutes or they would be penalized).

Look at the size of this!

The runway

There was about a ten minute break between each one for the runway to be cleared and then the samba drums would start again. The time flew….it was daylight before we knew it, yet we barely yawned. We were completely focused on the parade. Each school had something different, and there were multiple floats per school, and then also thousands of dancers (schools lose points if they have less than 2,500 people parading). It was insane!!!

Floats and dancers

Any lulls in between samba schools was taken up with people watching…there were a few good costumes about in the crowd!

Impressive costume....though he got into so many of my photos!

The floats were so big. They were all so original and each of the schools told a story which the floats and dancers explained. Some we got, others we didn't!

Samba school flag

The Samba drome

Classic Rio showgirl!

Everything was so well organised; we barely had to queue for anything. The streets were full of people selling drinks so we didn't need to worry about high bar tabs or having to queue for ages. Crime…well, we were very careful and didn't take much out with us each day. A few things did go missing, but on the whole, we were completely looked after and safe.

Dressing up was great fun, and we did it every day….a range of costumes. I was coerced into dressing up as Princess Peach from the Mario games (love wearing a crown!), which was a giggle, though less recognizable than the brothers!

I was impressed with some of the elaborate costumes we saw, people even wore them on the beach!

But, compared to Cologne, which was more centralized, I would say we saw less people dressed up. However, there were plenty of dressed up dogs!

Every evening we saw an amazing parade go right outside our street. The noise was amazing, and then there was a little bus and just so many people! We would sometimes go and join in for a little while. Thanks to our school carnival a few of the songs were familiar.

I spent the day time chilling on the beach, whilst my friends joined the blocos. I missed having a girl with me, and just needed some quiet solo time! Our apartment was five minutes between Ipanema and Copacabana so was in a great location.

Sunset

Beach play time!

The evenings were amazing, and I was amazed by the friendliness and levels of English on the streets. It was an incredible few days.

Giant ant head lend

Hello clown!

I am so glad we got to go, and am rather gutted now that is all over and we are back at work! Post holiday blues…. but Friday night we get to watch the Winner's Parade in Sao Paulo's samba drome! Woo!