Samba De Janeiro!

Even though we said we were not going, even though we had a great Car­ni­val in Paraty… Once again, we made it to the Sam­bo­dromo in Rio de Janeiro for the last day of the Carnival.

We attended the Parade of the Cham­pi­ons, fea­tur­ing the best samba schools in Rio, who had the whole night to show off. We took the sub­way to the sta­dium, with — it seemed — half of Rio. A lot of per­form­ers were already wear­ing their cus­toms in the sub­way, and I got a hug from two ¨golden guys¨ who put glit­ters all over me.

We did not have any tick­ets for the show, but we knew that chances are, we could find some­thing in the 90,000 seats sta­dium. It only took us about 30 min­utes to buy some cheap tick­ets from scalpers ($5 each!) for sec­tor 13, the pop­u­lar stand at the end of the parade. Good enough for us!

The place was packed. We sat on con­crete benches and we were glad to see we actu­ally had a good view on the parade down there. It took each school about 1:20 min­utes to walk the whole sam­bo­dromo, and we left exhausted at 3:00 am. But what a show!

Two Golden Boys

Back­stage…

Before The Show…

Masks

Mangueira Samba School

Mangueira Samba School

Rio Grande Samba School

Rio Grande Samba School

Vila Isabel Samba School

Vila Isabel Samba School

Vila Isabel Samba School

Portela Samba School

Related arti­cles:

1. Cross­ing To Uruguay
2. Brazil­ian Car­naval In Paraty (1)
3. Snow Fall !
4. Not Win­ter Already…
5. Always Take The Weather With You