Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics, Brazil
After visiting Rio de Janeiro in May of 2016 for the first time, I didn’t think I’d be back so soon. Rio was an amazing place that I wanted to go back to but there are many other places to visit before going back to the same city twice. Suppose all that changed with the 2016 Summer Olympics in August. I had no intentions of really going to the Olympics in Rio at all until a Wednesday afternoon at work, when I casually looked up how much it was to fly to Rio that weekend using my airline miles. The next morning I was still thinking about it but wasn’t fully convinced. In the end, the spontaneous adventure side got to me; I bought my plane tickets Thursday at lunch and then flew out in the evening after work that same day, to go see the Olympics at Rio de Janeiro for the long weekend!
Thursday afternoon, I’m sitting at work in my cubicle. Friday morning, I wake up to my flight landing in Rio de Janeiro. Back to the land of sunshine and beautiful beaches. I had seen most of the major tourist attractions on my first trip to Rio 3 months earlier so most of my time this trip was spent watching Olympic sports and just hanging out on the beach. I was able to buy some inexpensive tickets to watch the preliminary rounds for Men’s Table Tennis and Women’s Field Hockey. Quite awesome to see some of these sports in person, particularly some of the non-main stream ones. In the end, I was able to watch the eventual gold medal winners play in the preliminary games I saw which was something pretty special. Besides watching table tennis and field hockey, the scene around the Olympic stadium area and beach volley arena was packed with fans, from all over the world. Having more down time this trip around allowed me to get my daily coconuts while hanging by the beach each afternoon. I also revisited this awesome Brazilian Steakhouse: Carretao Ipanema that I went to twice on the first trip. They may or may not have recognized me, for having dined there 3 times during my 2 trips to Rio.
Rio 2016 Olympics Photos
