Odila's Flashes & Snapshots: Some pre-carnaval fun in Rio

So, here I am in Rio de Janeiro, aka "Cidade Maravilhosa" (Marvelous City). Apologies for my complete lack of humbleness, but the city is indeed marvelous! I came down here for a long overdue birthday season. It has been a long long time since I last spent my big day with darling mom & dad, family and great friends. That will be next week.

However, if you are familiar with the moving dates for the yearly national party of carnaval, you will connect the dots and realize that my birthday is always very close to carnaval and that I can't help but just enjoy ther whole atmosphere that carnaval brings. As I wrote a bit earlier it has been a long time since I last had my birthday in these shores, which leads you to also realise that it has been another long while since I last spent carnaval in Rio. I had forgotten how fun it is, how "family and friendly user it can be!"

This morning, around 11 AM, Joel and I went out to join the "Bloco de rua" that was parading along the next street from where we are staying. "Bloco de rua" is something VERY Brazilian. In those, one has a moving band playing various samba themed lyrics along a pre determined area of the neighborhood and behind this band, comes a whole bunch of followers singing those songs and having fun. In most cases, these followers might be wearing costumes. Blocos de rua are all over the Country during the carnaval season. Rio has about 500 of them spread all over town.

Ours this morning was named "Imaginou? Entao amassa" and it paraded along Jose Linhares street finishing right at the beach in Leblon. The neighborhood of Leblon comes right after Ipanema. It was indeed loads of fun. Very family oriented and family friendly. There, one finds their primary school friend and teacher, the girl who lives down the road, the guys you always see in the morning when you are buying your bread, the man who sells pop corn outside your child's school... get the idea of the whole atmosphere we had? Really cool very carioca like (cariocas are the natives from Rio) ... so much fun.

As Joel and I were about to return home, we met my darling niece Ana, her gorgeous son Eduardo and my sister in law... didn't I tell you it is a family affair? Hope you enjoy the pictures.