Saturday - 28 February 2009 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Insight #1: Nowadays it is absolutely essential to arrive at the airport or plan connection times of at least 3 hours on international trips. Insight #2: Following rule #1 can cause really long waits in various Red Carpet Clubs. Insight #3: Don't expect much to eat in Red Carpet Clubs. A few carrot sticks do not go very far.
United flights from Denver (in snow showers) and from Washington Dullas (in heavy rain) left on time, the former arrived 20 minutes early and the latter 20 minutes late due to air traffic control although there were no other planes landing or taking off. Weather in Rio is clear, temperature at 11 am is the boiling point of iron (but nice). Speaking of nice, my name was called by the gate agent as boarding started on the 10:19 pm ten hour flight from IAD. Seat 26A was replaced with seat 9A, a new United lie-flat "pod" in Business Class. A beef fillet wrapped in bacon replaced my vegan lactose free meal which had been replaced by the same capricious United Airline gnomes by a dairy laden low-fat meal. Two (or was it three) glasses of a Chilean merlot made the less than capacious but greatly improved C-cabin seat/bed very comfortable as well as even more needed. The blue bird of travel happiness poops or smiles on/at you, sometimes as the same time. Even luggage arrived within minutes of my arriving at baggage claim as well as notorious Brazilian Immigrations' vindictive treatment of Americans had also changed to a big smile and a hardy obligata from the not ugly Immigration agenta. A lengthy wait for the one other paid for cruise line transfer from the airport to the hotel (due to their luggage being misplaced between Boise, San Francisco, Washington, and Rio) was tempered by a lengthy chat with the 30-something cruise line representative who regaled me with stories of her working in the States at a kosher catering place in LA while getting a degree at UCLA. I had met the Boise couple at the gate in Washington (pre-upgrade, but they were upgraded as well). They for reasons unknown told me about the "Jewish Festival" each Fall in Boise where bagels and pastrami is brought it. I introduced the Boise folks to the UCLS woman when they showed up. I figured they all had something in common.
The Caesar Park Hotel is at the center of Ipanema Beach. It's Saturday and the world looks a lot nicer, especially on and at the beach. The hotel is immodestly dowdy. No one speaks English, the CRT TV set has cable with 80 channels all in Portuguese except for a subtitled old Iron Chef and the subtitled Jonny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. No CNN, BBC, or even (arrgh) Fox seemed to be available. Oh well. I approached the Silversea courtesy desk at the hotel to arrange for a early but cheap taxi transfer to the ship for tomorrow (to replace a $140 proposal from Silversea Cruises). I asked a British couple who were standing by if they were engaging the agent or if I might proceed with finalizing my arrangement. They graciously stepped aside, saying they were just looking at possible tours. The agent proceeded to ask me all the same questions as from a earlier discussion, at which point the English gentleman started to holler at me in a loud and very indignant voice that I had barged into his transaction. I said I thought they had given me leave to finish my transaction which only made the guy more upset. I apologized again. They repaired to the hotel bar where they spent the afternoon while I took a walk on the beach, a number of pictures from various locations, and returned to the hotel to seeing my friends from Albion still repairing in the bar over a number of Brazilian chardonnays.
Another couple accosted me shortly after. They were having lunch in the 23rd floor restaurant with a dynamite view (as well as blown up prices), and I was taking a few snaps from the windows. The woman, a complete stranger, said, "Didn't you lecture on cruise ships?" I asked why she thought I did. She said, someone had told her about how good my lectures were. I asked how she recognized me from a description from a third party. At least she didn't say outright that I looked Jewish.
I've just discovered that the spell checker on this new notebook computer's Outlook Express is in French, the Windows picture resizer is not installed, and the Gmail off-line setup doesn't support off-line attachments. Work arounds to all will give me something to do on the cruise, as if I have spare time. Will head to the Silver Cloud tomorrow after the included breakfast at the hotel.
Sunday - 1 March 2009 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
CNN International (European version) and the BBC appeared in the channel line-up after a lovely dinner in the hotel of "Brazilian Meet Stew". I met and ate the meat, I suppose. The meat as well as the meet was great. My friend Marc's Portuguese translation of my non-lactose diatary needs worked like a charm with the restaurant's hostess. So did her English. By the way, after a good sleep of 8 1/2 hours, the hotel seems a lot nicer. I greeted the English couple this morning by asking if everything was OK. They said, "You bet." Off to the ship shortly...
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