Carnival

Carnival, what a great experience. Being labeled as the biggest festival in the world Rio's carnival is amazing. Reid, Carla, Fu and I arrived in Rio in the early afternoon on Sunday. We drove straight to Sugar Loaf, which is the main rock overlooking downtown Rio and the harbor. Very amazing.

Rio de Janeiro

Afterwards we caught a quick lunch then we went to Carla's grandparents to drop off our clothes and to get ready for the parade. Carla's grandparents were amazing hosts. Even though we did not speak the same language they went out of their way to make us feel at home.
Since there are some 60,000 tourists that enter the city for the week long festival driving and lodging get very crowded. We took a taxi to the fest grounds which was a good thing because Rio gets very dangerous at night. The stadium which houses the main parade is huge.

Carnival!!

The main idea of carnival is the different neighborhoods in Rio put together a performance and act it out in the stadium. These different parades tell stories and are put to song with costums and floats. Each "school" as they are called gets one hour and a half to complete their program and each school has around 1,500 to 2,000 people marching in this parade. The sounds, colors, and the songs are almost overwelming.
The most amazing part is that this parade goes on for 4 days. Different neighborhoods get to present on different nights. To make a long story short, we watched 3 different schools and still were not able to sit through them all (we left at 4 am. with still 1 more school to go). The next day we spent checking out the beaches.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil