After 25hours of airplanes and airports we touched down in Rio just as the sun came up over the surrounding mountains.

We grabbed our bags and headed out to our hotel taxi – time to ditch the bags and head to the beach. Since it was 7am when we got to the hotel and we were dying for a shower we realised early check in was the way forward. As a bonus this also included breakfast – result!! After freshening up and a very over indulgent breakfast, to make up for the plates of airplane meals, we headed to the famous Copacabana Beach – only 150m from our hotel.

Being pretty jet lagged we decided today was going to be a relatively relaxing one. It was 28 degrees and very overcast so we took a long walk along Copacabana beach. On the way back we pitched up on the beach and took in the scenes. Within seconds we were offered Brazils finest Caipirinhas and they were like rocket fuel, it was 2pm at home so the fact it was only 11am with us didn’t seem to matter much!

Mid afternoon we headed back to the hotel to check out the rooftop pool but we’d completely forgot how to get back to the hotel so this took far longer than it should have, again we will blame the jet lag. A few more drinks in, a few degrees hotter and in classic tourist style we were burnt, well I was burnt and Laura singed.

After many layerings of after sun we headed out to neighbouring Ipanema for some food. This was a cool little place and we liked it a lot but it’s started to Chuck it down as we arrived so we didn’t see as much as we wanted to. Following a recommendation we eat at Boteco Belmonte, a cool beachside restaurant / bar with a live DJ. Looking back, what happened next is another episode of jet lag. There wasn’t a decent plate of food ordered between us!!

I ended up with a thin (well done) breaded steak with toasted ham and cheese on top in a tomato sauce with broccoli rice and chips. Laura got a selection of pastas and sauces that was equally as weird. The beers and the view made up for it all though, hard to get that wrong here I think.

Just like that day 1 was done. A good nights sleep was needed to get us ready to cram in everything we wanted to in Rio over the next few days. Even though we’d only seen a very small amount in day 1 we were super excited to see what Rio had to offer.

G&L xx