Day 71 – Flamengo-Vasco 2:1

The day didn’t start so well. I had a dentist appointment that was supposed to last 1 hour, but instead I spent 3 (!!!) hours in her chair! All because my stupid teeth didn’t want to come out this time. She literally had to HAMMER them out. And all these years I was afraid of falling on my face again and knocking them out! Silly me, it was absolutely impossible!!!

I felt horrible, because we planned to go to Corcovado in the morning and then proceed to our futbol (soccer) game at Maracana, and now we had to skip the Jesus hill altogether! (After Dima and Tanya left to NYC though, we learned that Corcovado was closed for days because of the mud-slides, so now I don’t feel that horrible, thank God). The guys didn’t seem to mind waiting for me though, because there was famous Ipanema street fair going on that day, so they kept themselves busy buying little souvenirs, negotiating with vendors, chilling.

For some reason, we take turns going nuts here. Today is Dima’s day and during our quick lunch at Zaza (an amazing restaurant, apparently 1st choice in the Lonely Planet guide, although we didn’t know it when we picked it just because we peeked in and liked the ambiance) he kept unobtrusively snapping pictures of a completely random couple at the next table. The study of their lunch can pretty much be made into a movie. Which I did, using our newly discovered Picasa – enjoy:).



Our next stop is the game. Maracana is apparently the biggest soccer stadium in the world, able to accommodate 90,000 people. Dima got our tickets at Flamengo Club, so by default we were cheering for that team, although, honestly, they were not that spectacular. Neither was the other team. But what was truly spectacular there is the whole feel of the stadium, the rush exuded by the fans. People didn’t stop drumming, clapping, whistling, stomping, or singing for a second. It was one hour and forty-five minutes of background noise. Surprisingly, a very enjoyable noise, noise that makes you want to become part of the crowd. Which we did, trying to sign along with the Flamengo fans something in Portuguese. An interesting fact about Maracana: they do NOT allow alcoholic beverages at the stadium. We thought it was a very good rule that surely helps to curb any post-match enthusiastic rivalry.

The highlight of the evening was our cab ride back to Ipanema (with our second failed attempt to make it to Santa Teresa first). It was overwhelmingly clear that our taxi driver loves Rio. He was trying so hard to pass some interesting knowledge that he possessed on the history and architecture of the city to us, but unfortunately, it was all in Portuguese. We thought we made it very apparent to him that we didn’t understand a word, but he was relentless and continued insisting on narrating our ride in his native language. Finally, Dima caved in and started a conversation with him. In English, of course. The guy didn’t flinch and happily answered all Dima’s English questions in Portuguese. It was the most nonsensical conversation I have ever heard: they were happily chatting away in parallel for the duration of our trip (about 30 minutes) as if nothing weird was going on. The back seat was cracking up with laughter (Tanya was actually crying, as she always does when she cannot laugh any longer).