Now we’re in Brazil! It’s the start of our world tour. 🙂
The trip from Paris to São Paulo was a long one, with the metro, RER, bus, plane and cab adding up to around 19 hours. You have to earn that Brazil.
We were sad and happy to leave, even though we almost missed our plane. Yes, it’s possible to almost miss your plane by leaving 4h30 before take-off. We were unlucky, as the RER B drivers were on strike. There’s no better way to put the pressure on before a year of travel. Instead of an hour’s journey, it took us 3 hours… so we arrived running 30 minutes before the ticket office closed. We still had room to spare 🙂 But we were forced to say our goodbyes in a hurry 🙁 (with my family in a crowded RER train at a standstill and at the airport in less than 30min) with Lolotte and Flo’s sister.
The flight went very well, and TAM’s Boeing 777 is really quite nice. A meal (totally gobbled up by Flo, a first in the history of airplane meals), a film, an almost restful night’s sleep, breakfast and we arrived in Brazil. And yet another adventure… After a funny passage through customs, we arrive at the conveyor belt level to pick up our bags, find Flo’s straight away and wait for mine. We could have waited a long time, because my bag never came out on the carpet, but now I’m in a panic. “They can’t lose my bag on the first day. I stay here with the stuff and Flo goes on a mission to find out more. After 5 minutes of discussion with the airport staff, Flo finds my bag sitting in a corner with other bags, with no further information. All right, here we are, it’s 6:30am and already daylight.
Finally, we just need to find Caro & Ludo’s apartment in a city of 22 million inhabitants. Fortunately, we have the address and Uber works well in São Paulo. However, on carnival day and during rush hour, we took 1h30 instead of 50min. We were lucky enough to come across a driver who spoke English very well, and we were able to test our level.
The Uber drops us off in front of the building where we’ve met up with our super hosts and crazy guides for these 5 days of carnival. We’d arrive and they’d go off to work. Just an hour to chat and have breakfast, recommend a restaurant for lunch, give us the keys to the apartment and we were on our own. We took the opportunity to go to the pool (yes, there is a pool and a gym in the building), shower and have lunch. After a giant burger (from now on, we’ll have one dish for two), a fruit juice and a beer, we head back to the apartment for a nap and a rest while we wait for Caro & Ludo.
In a few hours we’ll be having our first party in São Paulo, and tomorrow we’ll be starting Carnival.
