Brazil: heading home

Apologies for the delay in posting this; studying for the NCLEX has consumed my time since returning.  But that's another post...

James got up extra early (remember, we went to bed after midnight the night before, and out of principle I am not a morning person) and took a bus downtown to retrieve his old passport from the Consulate.  An hour or two after he left, I woke up to the sound of rain.  It had gotten cooler the previous evening, but we were secretly hoping that we would be able to visit the sun-drenched beach one last time before we flew back to the cool Northwest.  Well, the beaches were drenched, just not in sunshine.

We made an early trip to the grocery store so James could stock up on his favorite foods from Brazil, such as Guarana and grape Fanta sodas (the cane-sugar grape Fanta in Brazil is infinitely superior to the HFCS grape Fanta in the U.S., in spite of what the Corn Growers Association of America says), sandwich cookies, and bonbons to share with friends and fam.

We got back to the apartment and packed our things and then left them with our landlord so he could get our room cleaned for his next tenants, and went to do some last-minute shopping and get a bite to eat.  It being our last day (and our luggage already being stuffed) we refused to buy umbrellas, and instead just got a bit wet.  No worse than Portland in the fall, except that we didn't even have long sleeved shirts.  No worries, though.  We went back to a used-book store down the street, where I got a few children's books to practice my Portuguese, and James got some more advanced reading.  We also got some t-shirts and a good quality stitched Brazilian flag.  All nice, flat things that our almost-bursting suitcase could accommodate.  

Then we decided to splurge and go to Bob's Burgers, a Brazilian fast food chain reminiscent of its American cousins.  I say "splurge" because one can get a fairly filling lunch for two at one of the luncheonettes for under R$10, but it cost us about R$25 for two burgers (my chicken burger was good, but all dark meat), one medium fries, and two shakes.  Fast food is more of an American luxury there, and I think I'll stick to Brazilian luncheonettes on my next trip.  On the other hand, the service was way better than you get at McDonald's.

Translation: "Bob's. Brazilians like you enjoy it."

James ordering a meal.

The selection.  Expensive even after the currency exchange.

As we had no sun-drenched beach to relax upon, we decided to hop on a bus and get to the airport a bit early.  We figured that we could at least hole up someplace dry and watch movies on my laptop.  The airport is this big, concrete building that looks like it was built in a Communist nation during the Cold War Era.  We got checked in (which only took a little extra time, considering James's multiple passport problem) and after finding our gate (insanely easy, as there were only about four), we went in search of an outlet.  After much searching and a asking a nice security guard (who told us the Portuguese word for "electrical outlet"), we were directed to the ONLY public electrical outlet in the entire International Departures area of the airport.  Again, I think this place was built in the '50s, when nobody had laptops or cell phone chargers.  In any case, I went to plug in my laptop, and the outlet was so old and my surge-protector plug was so heavy that it just fell out the the socket.  Drat.  Fortunately, James was able to jury-rig a solution with some rubber bands, supplied by a friendly airline clerk.  So we watched movies until it was time to board our flight.

Ahh, ingenuity!

The flight from Rio to São Paulo, and then from São Paulo to Houston, was as comfortable as a nearly-full, 16-hour flight can be.  We made the best of it.  On the other hand, the flight from Houston to Portland had one empty seat, and it was next to us!  A guy stuck between two elderly people (okay, let me preface this with the fact that a senior citizen group had taken over at least a third of the plane to go to the casino near Lincoln City) wanted to move to it, but I pulled the whiny-witch-who's-been-traveling-for-18-hours-already card and he played the southern-Texan-gentleman card, stayed where he was and made polite conversation about his neighbor's grandkids while I stretched out and slept.  Score!  Also, this plane was equipped with electrical plugs at certain seats, and our semi-occupied row was the lucky winner.  Double score!

We had to claim our luggage in Houston for Customs.  

These are the ghosts of lost luggage past, forced to haunt the baggage claim forever.

So we arrived home to sunny skies (take that, Rio!) and a MAX waiting to shuttle us to our home-bound bus.  We were welcomed home by a very stressed kitty (who got over it after a few days).

Take me with you, next time!

Summed up: Best Vacation Ever.