Rio de Janeiro is full of beautiful spots I have never explored, despite being from here. So on my last birthday, way back in March, I decided to do some exploring and go have breakfast with my family at Fort Copacabana, located at the very end of Copacabana beach, with high expectations of beautiful sights and delicious food. I was not disappointed.

Although the day was quite cloudy, it was still a lovely day. The plan was to have breakfast at Confeitaria Colombo, an extremely traditional must-visit coffee house in Rio de Janeiro. The original location of Confeitaria Colombo is actually located in Rio's city center and is absolutely stunning and full of the most delicious pastries, so I figured such a place with an added view of Copacabana could not go wrong. 

Unfortunately, though, once we got to the Fort, the waiting line for Confeitaria Colombo was already huge, with about 20 people listed. Main tourist tip of the post: get there early and not too desperate for food. Even on a cloudy day, it was full, I can only imagine what it's like on a sunny day. Since the Olympics officially start tomorrow, the place will certainly be packed all through August.

Considering we were starving and we became a family of hangries quickly, we decided to go for the other not-so-well-known-but-equally-adorable coffee place located there, Café 18 do Forte. There were only 3 people before us in line. Much better.

This is a very tardy post. I've had this thought out in my brain for months now and had found no time to put it in practice. Maybe that was a good thing though. After all, when you are terribly sad and lost, there is a certain amount of comfort that comes from thinking of past times with loved ones in amazing places. Looking back and realizing you were happy there despite what you are sad about now gives you hope that that happiness may be real again.

You see, on June/July, my sister and her boyfriend came around to see us. It was the first time we were meeting him and it was the first time I was seeing my sister in a year and a half. I was excited.

Not only that, though, since it was his first carioca adventure, we had to go to certain touristic places. It was obligatory. And might I tell you that I love touristic places. It's something else to see your city through the eyes of someone new to it all. It's special. It gives you a fresh point of view.

So we first took him to a traditional churrascaria and afterwords we went to see the sunset in a place called Parque da Cidade, an Environment Protected spot in town. One of my personal favorites. The view is ridiculous, it's possible to see all of the city's coast line and the opening of the Guanabara Bay to the ocean. It's somewhere people paraglide from, to end up landing in one of our beaches. I mean, do I need to say more?

We also managed to go to the always delightful Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, taking advantage of the rainy day that it was, and saw the Salvador Dali exposition going on there. May I say, Dali's works of art are something else. I could spend forever staring at his paintings trying to understand and absorb it all. CCBB, as we call the place, is another century old location. It's a place for books, art, music, good food and lovely people. The high walls, the people reading in the corners, leaned back on the columns, the general calmness, quiet and relaxed ambiance. I swear every time I go there I feel complete joy.

One important note: I am Brazilian. 

Football (take your soccer out of here, USA) may have been invented in England, but it's Brazil who holds it dearest. We and most of the world consider us the "Football Nation" and there's a reason for it. Trust me. We don't take our soccer lightly. I mean, there's always a game going on every week and everyone roots for someone. Our heroes are our football players and our Olympics is the World Cup. So when we loose a game against Germany by 7x1 on a World Cup semi-final that's being played at home, it hits us big time. But, you see, while other places may think that football is just a game and we will recover, while, for instance, England can loose and easily go home and just move on to the next big tournament (in this case, Wimbledon), to us the World Cup means influencing politics, economy and every-day life. Specially this one. 

Don't be confused. I'm not writing this as a journalist, retelling facts, or as a critic, pointing out flaws. It's more of a way to relief all the anger and sadness that's going on thanks to the latest massacre and maybe pin point some relevant issues that gringos may not understand. 

Politics, Economy and Every-day Life

Let's start with the hard ones. Last year, on July, a revolutionary movement started in the streets of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, rapidly spreading throughout the country (and the internet). In a very poorly worded description I could say it was about how brazilians decided we were very fucking (pardon my language) fed up with how things were going. Brazil as a country has issues in pretty much any aspect of public life. We don't have many things we're proud of. Our hospitals suck, our educational system sucks, our gigantic economic disparities between social classes suck, our economy sucks, our professional prospects suck... I mean, I could go on, but you get the point. "Oh, stop complaining so much, it's better than so many years ago!". Not saying it isn't better. Not even here to discuss that. But, really, it should be better than years ago, right? I don't know about you but I like to believe that society evolves. Optimism is key when trying to not be depressed. My point is, no matter how much better it is now, we're still not satisfied. And we're mostly outraged by how our public money, our taxes are being put to use. That's when the World Cup comes in. As a country with so many issues, there was a huge controversy about how much money was being "wasted" to host the World Cup. Keep this little story in mind, please.

When I say this will all affect the country's politics and economy, I'm not exaggerating. Now, I'm not here to give my opinion on the government or the movements that started last year. But, as a Brazilian, I'm not blind. Truth is that how the World Cup turns out directly affects this years presidential elections. Let me make this very clear: I do not mean to say that the result of the games depend on Presidente Dilma, or that Dilma solely depends on the games. I mean the election will be highly influenced by the games. Got it? No? I'll make it even more obvious. While the public acceptance of Dilma as a candidate has been going down since last year, ever since the World Cup started the President's acceptance has been elevated once again. This does not mean she wasn't already ahead of the other candidates. It just means that, with the World Cup, she was a lot more ahead of the others. And, considering PT (Dilma's party) has been in the government for the last 12 years, and the other strong candidate comes from a party who has an opposite line of governing, this year's election might change many, many things. 

You see, Brazil loves it football. And Brazil has quite a short memory and is very quick to forgive if it's convenient. So, while Brazil was winning, people were happy and content, and able to easily forget about all our other issues as a country, because football is a religion, it's what we're proud of. But with our loss, what's bad, becomes worse. We're unhappy so we point out every single flaw in our country, and then some. It's a constant state of fed up-ness. And then there are more movements, more violence, more dissatisfaction. You can logically see how this will influence the election, the economy and our daily life, right? And yes, it is superficial, but it's also pretty much true. We're not a very bright country. (I did mention our educational system sucks). There's a reason social networks are so popular here, we go along with others opinions very easily without prior analysis...

Black and White.

This is not a racial point. It's quite simple. Brazilians don't deal well with grey areas. As our recent soap operas have showed, brazilians like to establish villains and good guys. Everything is considered black and white. And this was easily seen throughout this World Cup. You see, no matter how useless Fred was as a player, he could hardly be named as the sole problem of the team. No, it went way deeper than that. It involved all the players, the high level of dependency on Neymar, the lack of integration of the team and Scolari's faulty decision making skills. And yet, Fred took all the blame, as could be easily felt when he was booed so strongly by the fans in the stadium this last game. The huge amount of memes that made fun of Fred in comparison with the crazy amount of posts pro David Luiz and Neymar showed how black and white things go for the brazilian fans. Which is something I highly disagree with. The fact is: everyone screwed up. We have been struggling since the beginning. Today it was just way worse without Neymar and Thiago Silva.

There were no brazilian matches in the country's biggest and most famous stadium. This is a bigger pain for cariocas, I guess. But I can't help but think about how it makes no sense for Maracanã to have reopenned for the World Cup in Brazil and no games involving Brazil have been or will be played there. Specially since all players see Maracanã as a dream place to be.. Seems completely wrong in my book.

Our source of pride.

As I have said before: we aren't a very proud people. We complain about everything (though we don't allow gringos to do the same) and everything sucks. But football is ours. This is the Football Nation. And we wanted to have at least this win in our lives. At least this one thing to be proud of as a Nation. Something we haven't shared in a while. Our HEXA. Do you know what it's like to hate your entire life but this one tiny thing which you cherish the most? That's what football is to us. And that's what pains us the most. Now, we don't even have that. Because the truth is that Germany deserved that game. Our team was terrible, even painful to watch. We really don't even have that.

Last weekend I basically put all my efforts into doing something I've been wanting to do for years now and somehow never had the chance. I invited people, I programmed myself, I collected my information and I decided that I would go even if only one person accepted my invitation. And it worked. 

I had breakfast at "Parque Lage", a house built in the middle of Rio de Janeiro that has a beautiful garden, pool and an entire art school and you can also recognize it as the one used to film Snoop Dog's music video for "Beautiful". About 2 or 3 years ago my sister mentioned they serve breakfast and it is great. As I already new it was beautiful and I really love experiencing new things and places (specially when the weather is this beautiful), I have always wanted to go myself.

The place was swarming of tourists and cariocas all trying to get a seat in the shade, a couple of bread sticks and glasses of juice in their systems during the 40ºC weather. I was as excited as a bee and my parents and my friend were all starving. Unfortunately, we didn't know the place was so hyped up and there were so few tables, which meant we took over an hour to get a table. But we were patient and entertained by and adorable little girl and her dancing skills. I have pictures but thought it would be disrespectful to post them so if you want to picture her think of a baby Dora, the Explorer.

When we finally had the chance to sit down and eat our breakfast, though, it was blooming great. The place is beautiful and the breakfast comes quite complete with fruits, bread, cake, juice, coffee, yogurt, cereals and you can order additionals like omelets. It's a lovely place to go with your partner or your family and friends. Democratic and beautiful. But do go comfortably dressed as it is an open space and there are only fans to help you (and if you know Rio at all in the summer, you are well aware that fans are not enough).

Afterwords we could have enjoyed a walk around the gardens and its aquarium and beautiful architecture, but instead we decided to go to the beach in Rio for the first time ever. We had our bikinis and our sunscreen. We were quite close to Leblon and Copacabana. The sun was up strong. So hell, why not? 

Once we decided to go to Leblon, we were not let down at all. The water was calm, the beach was busy but not crowded and there was an empty set of chairs just waiting for us. The end result was 4 very content people, enjoying quite a lovely saturday.

Oh, yes, last weekend was quite a lovely weekend. How was yours?