Hello Rio!

Our first Brazilian dinner...happy girls!

It has been a very eventful first week here in Rio! We have gone to the beach, the lake, shopping, running, house hunting, visited a weekend market, gone to church, walked all over Ipanema and Leblon and (of course) eaten tons of delicious foods!

We have had some really delicious foods here!  First of all, we get breakfast included with our room at the hotel and it is really good.  Lots of yummy fresh fruits like mangoes, pineapples, bananas,  honey dews, watermelons, plums, apples, starfruits, kiwis, papaya, passion fruit, and strawberries.  There is also yogurt, a selection of cheeses and meats, the addictive little bread called Pão de Queijo (cheese bread), hot sausages and eggs (although the eggs look a little scary to me and I haven't eaten them) and a huge selection of pastries and breads.  Needless to say, I could probably eat this breakfast for several months without tiring of it.

We've also eaten a lot of great food for lunch and dinner.  Most often it's grilled meat or seafood ( sausages, pork cutlets, chicken, beef, salmon, shrimp, octopus) which is served with fluffy white rice and beans, some type of greens and salad. We also had german for a snack and sushi for dinner  it was fantastic!  There are lots of other types of restaurants here too- I've seen Italian, Thai, Turkish, and an Irish pub.

Dinner at Brasilerinho, a great restaurant next to our hotel; grilled pork, greens, rice and beans

The beer I've tried here has been, well, sad.  The popular beer on tap is called Brahms, and being the beer snob that I am, I think it tastes like Budweiser.  No thanks, I'll pass. The wine (especially the Malbec) is good and I'll probably stick to that.  Even though I don't drink mixed drinks, I did leave my comfort zone and try the local drink, a caipirinha, just so I could tell you about it.  First of all, it was really strong!!  They are very generous with the liquor here!  Wow!  I ordered a strawberry caipirinha (they have several fruit flavors - strawberry, tangerine, lemon, lime, and some others that I can't remember) and it was filled with strawberry chunks and rum.  If I liked rum, I probably would have loved it but I'm a beer/wine kind of lady, so I just ate the strawberries out of it and made my husband drink it.

The national drink of Brazil - the caipirinha

the glass my husbands sake was served in...it was quite comical watching him try to drink this without spilling