Rio de Janeiro is a weird and fascinating city, and we know it well now. It’s a place where we have tons of memories at different stages of our lives—I was a naïve 18-year-old backpacker my first time in Rio, but I also have memories of Mark at four crying because he didn’t want to leave Copacabana beach after sunset, pushing a stroller through flooded streets, bringing a stroller (!) to Carnival, celebrating Christmas in Rio under the rain twice…

And now, Mark is ten, my Portuguese is much better, and Feng has the blocos figured out.

We’re more experienced.

But we still find Rio fascinating.

And it should be a hell of an experience, once again. We know what to expect—it rains in Rio, Carnival is freaking crazy and exhausting, we’re going to compromise on comfort, the guys are only here for two weeks.

We also expect the unexpected. Did I mention that Carnival is crazy?

I think it’s worth it.

The three of us were exhausted on Saturday—I left Recife early in the morning after a short night, the guys had travelled all the way from Canada. Yet, we managed to take a long walk from Copacabana to Ipanema and buy Mark a much-needed pair of Havaianas (streets are coated in beer, plus Copa and Ipa flood after each downpour).

We have your typical Copacabana Airbnb for the first six nights. It’s wrong on so many levels—old plumbing, stupid layout, stuffy, one window only, zero efforts put into it because who cares, it’s in Copacabana, it’s going to get rented.

The apartment building is insane but again, typical of Rio—Rio is dangerous, so local Carioca logic is to hide behind many doors, protected by security guards and cameras. In the Nordeste, people live outside—there are balconies, common areas, and occasionally windows don’t even have glass by design because it’s pleasantly breezy. This is probably a Carioca’s worst nightmare. We don’t even have the key to the building’s front door, the 24/7 security guard opens it for you. And they are constantly watching CCTV from millions of cameras everywhere in the building.

Trust me, this is not a fancy building. It’s falling apart. Still. There are rules. Millions of rules. Case in point, we got soaked the first night on the way back from the supermarket. Feng took the elevator two minutes before me. As I was waiting for the elevator, I saw the security guy zooming on Feng who was opening the door, taking off his Havaianas, leaving them on the doormat and stepping inside with the grocery bags.

The security guy was clearly annoyed. He picked up the phone.

“This is my husband,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s forbidden to leave shoes outside.”

“But… he’s going to bring them inside! I think he is just taking the groceries in first, then he will probably grab the sandals and rinse them. We’re trying to keep the place clean, you know.”

“No shoes should be left outside on the doormat. Go tell him.”

Yeah… okay.

We decided to embrace this weird Airbnb. I mean, it’s so ugly and badly designed it’s almost a feature. I’m staring at the ceiling right now—the entire room is crooked, nothing is straight or makes sense. Like, there’s a sink inside the shower.

It’s not like we’re going to spend much time in it anyway.

On Sunday, we headed to Barra da Tijuca, one of Rio de Janeiro’s upscale suburbs, for our first bloco, the Banda da Barra. Carnival hasn’t even started, this is “pré-carnaval”… yet, 50,000 showed up.