Downtown Walking Tour

It was easy to find indigenous food on the busy streets of Centro.

This vendor was selling potatoes.

Not sure what's in these bags.

It seems like flip flops and sunglasses are available on every corner, too.

The Municipal Theater, in Cinelandia (love the neighborhood name!) is one of Rio's most beautiful buildings.

We stopped at Confeitaria Colombo for refreshment.  It reminded me of Demel in Vienna.

Andrew was civilized enough to remove his hat.

Afterward, Antonio led us to a pair of side-by-side churches.

The Old Cathedral served as the archdiocese of Rio until 1976 when the Metropolitan Cathedral opened.  Brazilian Catholics had worshipped in the Carmelite complex, which also included a convent, for nearly two centuries.

Severed heads were in ready supply.  Nobody could explain why.

The altar next door was a lot darker.

We walked past Carmen Miranda's home on our way to another church.  More than half a million people attended her funeral but the museum celebrating her life had closed while the artifacts and personal effects were being absorbed into a larger collection elsewhere, not yet open to the public. Andrew camped it up in front of her door to compensate for my keen disappointment.

We definitely got a sense of Rio's colonial history in Centro's narrow alleys.

Antonio said this church was one of the few where slaves were allowed to worship.  I couldn't find any corroboration but I liked it better than the others.

Its proximity to Carmen Miranda's home made me wonder if these figures inspired the "Brazilian bombshell's" famous fruit hats.  "Chica chica boom chic" indeed--Carmen was the original drag queen!

We dined at a former spice warehouse.  Very fancy.  And leisurely.

The marinated heart of palm with cashews looked really good but I was still too full from breakfast and the coffee milkshake I had at Confeitaria Colombo to eat.  

After lunch we checked out the post office and a park not far from the waterfront.

The 2016 Summer Olympic flame once burned here.

While locals fished for dinner in Praca XV, Thom squeezed in a nap.

A relief on a municipal building honored the merits of hard work.

The Olympics improved Rio's transportation infrastructure with a shiny new light rail that doesn't seem like it gets much use two years later.

Plenty of Cariocas were taking breaks as we walked to the metro.

Women played cards at an outdoor market.

Antonio nearly took us in the wrong direction at the Uruguaiana station.

We rode back to the villa with this rapt fellow.  I should submit his picture to Hot Dudes Reading.  As hard as we tried, neither Christine nor I could make out the title, although it did appear to be written in Portuguese.