Departure → Brazil

Heading out of Vegas

Adventure awaits!

We are headed on our fourth adventure of the summer today (July11th, 2019)! We left bright and early at 2am and arrived in Vegas to the airport at 3:30. One of Hunter's co-workers tagged along for the ride because the St. George airport is still closed. We have a couple of Facebook pages where we all post when we are traveling so we can carpool if possible! She was nice and talked the whole time, making the two hour drive fly by.

We took Alaska flight 1897 to San Francisco at 6am and arrived just before 8am. The Alaska plane we took was previously a Virgin America plane, which has a weird layout. There are only 8 first class seats and 1 row (6 seats) of premium economy. Most major airlines have anywhere from 12-20 business class seats and around 10 rows of premium economy. I'm not sure why people liked these planes, it's very cramped.

The pink mood lighting identifies the Virgin planes

When we arrived in San Fran, our next gate to JFK was almost beside it. We were hoping to get American Flagship First and it was looking highly likely! We were 8 and 9 for 9 seats in first, but two people were still not checked in, so we were 6 and 7! Shortly we were called up and given our seat assignments of 4A and 4F. There are actually only 10 seats in first and it was completely empty! Only 1 seat was a revenue passenger who was actually just an upgrade from business class. In the end there were only 7 non revs in the first class cabin! The flight to JFK ended up being slightly delayed, so instead of leaving around 8:30 we left around 9am.

Once in the air, breakfast was served. We started with cold pressed juice and a seasonal fruit plate. The juice was very green and interesting. Hunter liked it, but I didn't like it as much. For our main, Hunter and I both chose the sope. This is a Mexican breakfast dish hunter loves. It was different, but tasty. During breakfast, we watched the movie What Men Want which was the most hilarious movie ever! If you get a chance you should watch it. A while after breakfast we were served cheese plates which were great. It had delicious Gouda cheese, one of my favorites! I slowly ate away at mine because I was stuffed from all the food we were given, it's almost way to much food for a 5 hour flight!. Hunter and I then took short naps for the rest of the flight, waking up to warm cookie service and about an hour till arrival.

 

When we arrived it was like a whole new world! We hadn't been able to check loads so we had no idea what the flight now looked like because the bad weather in the area has been causing delays, cancellations, and diverts. We checked, and the flight still looked like we were making it, it was close, but we were still getting business. We had about 5 hours to kill, so we decided to walk around, which was much needed after all the food we consumed. We spent a good 2 hours walking and looking around, then headed to the priority pass restaurant hoping to get something to drink. We ended up ordering food, even tho we really didn't need it ("free" makes everything so tempting). I had a Greek salad which was nice and light while Hunter had a burger and fries. We also shared an ice cream Sunday that was gigantic! Priority pass covered the food and we left a ten dollar tip. Ten dollars for dinner for both of us is pretty darn good!

 

 

Giant ice cream sunday!

After eating and feeling like pigs, we walked down the terminal and then back to our gate where we again waited seat assignment. Finally she called our names and we went up to get our tickets, we got seats 13 D & G, beside each other. We were incredibly happy to make it! We quickly got on the plane and waited for departure.

For dinner, yes we got MORE food, hunter ordered shrimp and I ordered pasta. Hunter wanted something light which shrimp is good and I wanted something I could spend time picking away at slowly. Both our meals were great, but we were unable to finish it all.

Dessert was probably Hunter's favorite part of the meal, we had mango mousses that were delicious. I really like ordering some of the more unusual dishes on our flights and this one did not disappoint. After dinner we finished watching the movie Dumbo and then quickly fell asleep as it was nearing 10pm mountain time which is late for us as we woke up at 2am this morning. Both of us slept until breakfast service! It was nice to get some rest. The 777-300 flagship product is pretty nice and one of Hunter's favorites although we don't like feeling so far apart.

Once you lie flat, you never go back!

We arrived at the Sao Paulo airport around 9:15 July 12th, 2019, beginning our trip in Brazil! This is a trip of new things for both Hunter and I - new continent, new country, new route, new airport (×2). This makes 5 continents and 14 countries I've visited! Here's the list, in order, of countries I've visited:

1. Canada

2. USA

3. Costa Rica

4. Netherlands

5. UK

6. Japan

7. Singapore

8. Australia

9. France

10. Italy

11. Vatican City

12. Spain

13. South Korea

14. Brazil

Breakfast before arrival

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We arrived at 9:15am to the Sao Paulo airport. We needed to be quick here as our connecting flight departs at 12:30 to SDU (Santos Dumont), the smaller airport closer to the heart of Rio. We easily cleared customs and headed to find Azul's check-in, being made to walk through a duty-free shop on the way. I spotted sunglasses and stopped looking for some as I accidentally forgot mine at Hunters. The Raybans were quite expensive, around $150 but I found a polarized Polaroid pair I really liked for $66 and got $10 off! We then exited and found Azul's counter, checked in, and headed to terminal one. We had to go outside and take a bus to the other terminal and we almost took the wrong one, but eventually found the right one. We went through security, which was quite low tech, and waited for our flight to be assigned a gate.

Once it started boarding, we went up to the gate, but didn't understand anything because it was all in Portuguese. We got the attention of the agent and she said to wait so we knew we were not being forgotten. After boarding all the passengers, we went up and were assigned seats 2A and B. The plane was an Embraer 195. There are not many of those in the US, so it was neat. The windows are quite square. After getting seated, it wasn't long before I fell asleep. I was asleep before we even took off, but woke up for takeoff, the back to sleep. The flight was a short hour which for the most part was spent sleeping. We were awake for our arrival into SDU and got to see some pretty cool things from the window like the monument Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf mountain. It was beautiful.

Their cute safety video cartoon

Somewhere over Brazil

 

Mid flight snack

That's sugar loaf mountain to the right

We exited the airport and got an Uber to our hotel which was about 15 minutes away. We are on the 13th floor of a hotel called Rio Royal Palace in the Copacabana area. After dropping off our bags and freshening up, it was about 3pm and we decided to go get food near the Botanical gardens. It was a 20 minute Uber ride for about $4US. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of traffic so it was more like 30 minutes. Uber here is so cheap that everyone we know who's visited Rio recommends using it as transportation instead of public transit. While public transit is much cheaper, it's not super extensive and Uber equates out to the same price per ride as public transit is in Tokyo, London, and Seoul. It's also quite nice to be dropped off exactly at the location of your choice! Our plan was to eat at this highly reviewed pizza place and then visit the Botanical gardens before they closed, however, it was almost 4pm when we got to Ella Pizzaria and we were done just before 5pm with the gardens closing at 6. We decided to go back to our hotel and rest as both of us were tired and the sun was starting to go down. Everyone has told us to avoid walking around at night because of crime, so we were apprehensive, even though it was still light out. When we got back to the hotel, I took our leftover pizza back to the room and Hunter went to a convenience store to get water, soda, and some snacks. They recommend you not drink tap water in Rio, so we made sure to buy tons of water (4 small bottles and one large).

After Hunter got back, we both took a much-needed shower. It wasn't long before I was asleep, hoping to wake up early tomorrow to make use out of all the sunlight as it's "winter" here, so days are shorter (one detail we kinda forgot about South America).

The view from our room

Date: July 11-12, 2019