Tag 53 - Rio de Janeiro

For a change, the weather was supposed to be really good again today, so we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and headed to the Christ statue early in the morning.

We had already bought tickets online to take the first cog railway up. We followed the advice of many travel bloggers and our guide the day before to avoid the crowds of tourists. At 7:20 a.m. the first train of the day started for the 20-minute ride up the 710 m high Corcovado mountain to the "Cristo Redentor", where we already had a great view of Copacabana. We then walked the last few meters to the statue and there were already masses of people on the platform, literally fighting for the best photo. The sky was completely clear and the view of the city was unbelievably beautiful. The 38 m high statue is one of the seven new wonders of the world and of course one of the top sights in Rio de Janeiro.

After half an hour, it was too much for us to be constantly pestered by amateur photographers and to walk through countless pictures. We spontaneously decided to take the train down and visit another major attraction in the city. We took an Uber to the cable car to take the ride up Sugarloaf Mountain. And since it only opened a few minutes before we arrived and we had already booked tickets on the way, there was surprisingly little going on there. Here too, the view of the city with its countless high-rise buildings, the favelas on the surrounding mountains and the beaches was simply fantastic.

After we ate a few more crêpes and it was slowly getting more crowded, we made our way back. The temperatures also became really pleasant and we were finally longing for a cooling dip in the sea. Around midday we were lying on the beach of Copacabana in pleasant 30 degrees and took turns throwing ourselves into the waves.

Although we had already accomplished quite a bit, there was still another highlight in the evening - football again, in the famous Maracana stadium. We took the subway across Rio, where we got off not far from the stadium and were able to drink a few beers among local fans in a bar district. The stadium has space for around 75,000 people, but since today's game between Fluminense and Sampaio Corrêa in the Brazilian Cup was not going to be a crowd puller, there was relatively little going on. Our seats were right in the home curve and only a little over 20,000 spectators turned up. Before the game started, we tried the culinary specialties from the kiosk, but they were not convincing. The atmosphere was great again and things got off to a good start on the pitch. Fluminense won the game 2-1 and went through to the next round. Before the game, we met a Dutchman with whom we shared an Uber and drove back to our apartment.