Nai-publish: 03.10.2017
On the morning of the third, I woke up from sleep to the sound of 'we need to go to the airport'. In a split second, I was wide awake and felt weird. Over-enthusiastically, I grabbed my suitcase and we rushed to the airport. When we reached the check-in counter, I called Muriel (for safety purposes) and said 'hey, we're leaving now', typical me. After that, everything went quickly. We said goodbye to our parents and our fathers gave us a bottle of red wine for the road. In Lisbon, we already had no clue what anyone was saying. We went to check on our connecting flight and found out it was already delayed by an hour (which is normal, we can get used to it). Some people were able to board the same plane, and we had a very peaceful flight. Muriel slept for about 12 hours out of the 10-hour flight. And since I was practically her pillow, I slept less. After watching 27 movies, we finally flew over Rio and landed at the airport.
We wanted to get out of customs as quickly as possible, and we were even the first ones. When the customs officer asked us 'where are your departure documents?' we had to fill out some scrap of paper... we had no idea what we needed to write. We just did it. When I asked the relatively shy and reserved Brazilian customs officer, who was big and muscular, if I filled it out correctly, he started laughing and said 'yeeees yeeees, no problem, nobody cares, welcome to Rio'.
The taxi driver who took us to our apartment at Copacabana was either the brother or cousin of Rubens Barrichello (former Formula 1 driver). He just kept overtaking on the right and driving at least 40 km/h above the speed limit. Oh, and apparently he didn't care that the fuel gauge was already showing a low level when we left the airport and he ignored the warning signal around 10 times, urging him to refuel. Luckily, I found a gas station nearby.. But he was a nice guy, he gave us a little city tour and told us everything worth mentioning. We gave him 100 reais (30 CHF) and reached the apartment where our sisters and Sara were waiting for us. We quickly went to Copacabana and had a juicy steak with soggy fries but delicious beer. Muriel had a tasty burger.
After that, we went back to the apartment and had a great night in Rio. P.S. Such an amazing apartment for only 30 CHF per night.