20.06.2015.
Rio de Janeiro 4
The morning started with a nice, home-made ham and cheese omelet. I needed the energy for the long walk, I planed in Santa Teresa district.
I got off the metro at the Cinelandia station, which got its name from a place originally full of cinemas, of which a lot of now is just empty and abandoned houses. I started to walk to the Teatro Municipal, but in the place they were some "rough-faced" guys hunting for tourists. I try not to look like a tourist, but I can not hide always the truth. :-) I try to evade these people, but some of them (of course), I can not. In these situations I try to smile and say a loud "obrigado" (thank's), and walk on by fast without stoping. I had a good teacher. Thank's Renato. :-)
After catching a bus I arrived near to the Parque Das Ruínas, which was originally the house of a famous artist and philanthropist (Laurinda Santos Lobos), who donated her house to the city council of Rio. They did not maintained it for decades, so finally when it was decided to renovate, they reconstructed it only maintaining the main walls. However it has a beautiful view of the city. The house next door belonged to an other collector, who again donated his house with the collection to the city council, which they protected more, but seemingly not enough. In 2006 on a Friday afternoon six heavily armed man with grenade entered the Museu de Chácara do Céu and have stolen carefully selected pictures of Monet, Matisse, Picasso and Dalí, which are still on the Top 10 list of the FBI's most wanted artefacts. The exposition is quite all right, but it misses its big highlights...
After a nice lunch of quiche and salad I continued to walk and visited the Escadaria Selarón, which is a long stairs named after the Chilean artist, who constructed it using a lot of tile from all around the world. He was later murdered at the same stairs...
After the siesta of the afternoon my house-lord invited me to a "corner-fiesta", which was indeed in a place next to a petrol station with DJ, drink-shop and hotdog seller and a lot of youngsters dancing. Quite good music, however mostly Brazilian hits, of which I had enough after one hour, and I was of course tired because of the whole day walking. But it was not bad at all. :-)