Rio de Janeiro - intro post

Finally, I have made it to one of my dream destinations in the world, Rio! Bit disappointing to find it´s pronounced Hee-oh but apart from that I love it!! Looking up apartments for the fun of it and discovered you can buy a 3 bed apartment with internet, washing machine about 200 metres from Copacabana beach for about 300k euro. I can´t actually buy a house in the village where I´m from in Offaly for that much anymore. Holy shit, if you´ll pardon my French. It´s a very attractive prospect I´m telling you. Rio has an average temp of about 25 degrees all year round and lovely sunshine. I think it barely ever rains and when it does it´s only for a few days at a time and then it´s over! The place we´re staying is equally nice, a kind of apartment building/hostel/hotel with a little park outside where little kids play and people bring their tiny dogs. Tiny dogs are extremely prevalent here in Rio, I even saw a tiny version of a tiny dog yesterday, though they also have Huskies which are sooooo cuuuute. aww.
We went to pay old Cristo a visit day before yesterday - he´s been summoning clouds to prevent our picture taking from below. It was rather intersting to have a cloud advance on you and watch planes fly and eagles circle under you. I must say. Cristo´s on his perch at 700m altitude, pretty impressive.
The fact that the city is dotted with such mountains, about 4 miles of beautiful beach (maybe more) and a huge tropical rainforest between the beaches and the centre is impressive in itself! It has a great transport system and seems pretty affluent. I really really like it here, as you may have guessed! If only I´d been around for Carnaval! The samba schools are closed for a bit of shuteye after the party and so we can only watch and not join in on a show. I´d prob feel a bit self conscious anyway but it would´ve been nice to try.
This is truly a change from Brasilia. I enjoyed it for the time I was there but the feeling of extreme danger while trying to get from one place to another and the concrete really gets to one. Actually it´s probably better I was in such a place before here so I could appreciate it.
Despite the fact that I´m not ususally interested in soccer I can´t wait to go to the Maracana either (I thought the biggest stadium in the world, but apparently only one of according to wikipedia, damn!). I´m not sure whether to support Fluminense, Botafogo or Flamengo :)
They have a mountain called the Sugarloaf here too, so I don´t feel to far from home. More to follow, should be here for another week and a half or so, and I´ll need it!