Eat Rio Blog - Page 40 of 106

Ah Moleque!

19/07/2013/15 Comments/in Food and drink, Language

In my ongoing quest to learn Portuguese, there have been certain words and phrases that have proven difficult to pick up and use with confidence. A commonly cited ‘tricky’ Portuguese word is “saudade“, that profound feeling of wistful longing; sadness offset with a wan smile. But in my experience, although saudade is a tricky word to explain (see previous sentence), it’s an easy word to feel, to understand and therefore to use.

The words I find most tricky are the ones that have multiple meanings depending on context. Gírias (slang words) and Palavrões (swear words) are probably the main culprits.

One such word that I still find a little bamboozling is moleque (sounds like “mul-ECK-y”). The dictionary on my phone lists the following translations: (nouns) urchin, scoundrel, young person; (adjectives) mischievous, funny. Google Translate gives me 2 nouns: kid and imp.

Dis iz da street-spelling innit…

Something else to do in Rio

17/07/2013/2 Comments/in Things to do

A few weeks ago I had a couple of work colleagues visiting town – one from London, the other from Tel Aviv. They had both visited Rio 3 or 4 times before, always for business reasons, and I could tell they weren’t exactly excited to be here. I suspect that most of you who’ve experienced business travel will understand.

My current job doesn’t involve much travel, but in a previous job I travelled to South Africa, Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland. At first I rather enjoyed telling a friend nonchalantly “Oh yeah, I’m off to Madrid next week…”, but pretty soon I came to understand that the reality was bland business hotels, eating in restaurants on your own, waiting around in airports and obsessing over receipts.

Business travel – welcome to your bedroom for the next 5 days…

So, as the weekend approached I saw the glum looks on the faces of my colleagues and decided it was time for them to catch a glimpse of the real Rio! When I asked what kind of things they wanted to do, they both started off by saying “Not the Sugarloaf or the Jesus statue – we went there on our last visit. We just want to go somewhere normal for a few drinks”.

The protest at Palácio Guanabara

12/07/2013/42 Comments/in Musings

If any of you follow the Eat Rio Facebook page you may have seen that Mrs Eat Rio and I went along to a protest at Palácio Guanabara last night and things turned pretty nasty. I guess I was going to tell you guys about what happened anyway, but after reading the coverage in O Globo, I feel even more determined to describe events as I saw them.

First of all, why did we go? I wrote a few posts about the wave of protests that spread across the country last month – at the time I broadly supported the issues that were being protested, but I was a little frustrated that most of the protests seemed to start at around 4pm, so by the time I had finished work they had mostly petered out. When I arrived into town from work last night, I heard that there was a protest against Rio State Governor, Sérgio Cabral. Cabral’s dishonesty and corruption are well known in Rio (and beyond) and I thought it a worthy issue to protest.

The protest itself centred around Palácio Guanabara, the headquarters of the Rio State government – it’s a beautiful building that was recently refurbished at a cost of R$19 million. As we arrived the scene was startling – this splendid cream building with row after row of heavily armed riot police lined up in front.

Row upon row of heavily armed police guarding the resplendent Guanabara Palace.

There was a fairly modest crowd milling around and a slight whiff of tear gas (something I had never experienced before – this would change dramatically before the end of the night).

Photo Post: Cristo across the water

11/07/2013/2 Comments/in Musings

I don’t care how long you’ve lived in Rio, I can’t believe you ever get used to the spectacular views. You can forget about them for a while, I’m sure, but when you turn a corner and see something like this, how can you fail to be impressed?

[I put this image in a lightbox, so if you click it you can see it nice and big – check it out!]

Cristo Redentor – a great work of art.

A day at the beach, farofeiro style!

10/07/2013/4 Comments/in Food and drink

For me, spending a sunny day on the beach is one of the great pleasures of life in Rio. I’m not one of those people who wants to spend their holidays slavishly tanning from 10 in the morning until the sun goes down, but a day at the beach in Rio can be whatever you want it to be. Some people go to exercise (jogging, volleyball, futevôlei, etc), others go to socialise, relax and watch the world go by (I fall into this second category).

The end of a long, relaxing day on Ipanema beach.

I’ve always thought that a day out at the beach is pretty good value for money. If you want to hire a chair and/or umbrella for the day it will cost you just R$5 ($2.50) per item. Snacks, beers and other cold drinks will also cost around the R$5 mark, meaning that two people can enjoy a full day on the beach for R$50 ($25). Not a bad when you compare it to the cost of restaurants, taxis and the like.

But what if you earn minimum wage (R$678/month) or you’re trying to save money?