Like our plane flight to Rio, our return trip is a red-eye. After trying (and failing) to find a morning Olympic event that we could go to, we opted for sightseeing. But this choice came with logistical challenges. Our half-day tour to the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue picks us up at 8:15 am. This is sooner than we'd been getting out of the hotel on most days. But more importantly, we wouldn't be back before checkout time at the hotel. This meant that we'd have to check out before the tour departed which, in turn meant that we had to have our bags mostly packed the night before. Fortunately, we could pack and watch Olympic events at the same time so this worked out all right. The biggest challenge was removing all of the pins from my pin vest!
We grab a quick breakfast, say goodbye to our favorite waiter and manage to checkout and get our bags moved to a storage locker just in time. A big bus pulls up in front of the hotel, but the driver does not speak English and it takes some doing for us to figure out that this is not our bus. 8:15 comes and goes with no bus. Finally, around 8:35, another bus arrives - and we have the same problem. We finally get the help of one of the hotel clerks to discover that yes, this is our bus.
The bus, which is completely empty at this point, has an enclosed area in the front and an open roof in the back. We opt for the front because Beth and I were not sure we'd be able to hear the guide if we sat in the back. The bus sits there for some time and we finally figure out that we are waiting for our guide. She finally arrives and we are off. Well, off in a relative way. We spend about the next hour making pickups at hotels in the Ipanema and Copacabana neighborhoods. Street blockages become more common as we get near the beach volleyball venue and there are times when we wonder how the bus driver is going to get out of the narrow spots he is forced into to pick up passengers. Finally, the last pickup is done and we are on our way.
Our guide, whose English is not great, tells us that there are people like us who are on a half-day tour to Cristo Redentor and others who are on a full-day tour which will include lunch and an afternoon tour of Sugarloaf mountain. We would have loved the full-day tour, but we'd been informed by the travel company we are staying with that our pickup to go to the hotel will occur at 3:00 pm even though our flight does not depart until 9:30 pm. This is due to the possibility of bad traffic due to Olympic street closures.
Street closures are also affecting our tour. Our guide tells us that we'll spend much less time than usual in the central part of Rio than usual because of traffic. Since we're only in this to see Cristo Redentor, we are okay with this.
Our first stop is at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian. This is a modern Catholic cathedral that opened in 1976. Brazil has the highest population of Catholics in the world so the building of this church was a very big deal. The outside:
is apparently designed to look like a Mayan pyramid although why they chose to honor people who lived far, far from Rio is beyond us. This was also the prevailing attitude of Brazilians in the 1960's when the church was under construction. They did not like the looks of it at all. However, I imagine that this changed rapidly one it opened. Inside the cathedral is spectacular:
There are four of these 200+ foot tall stained glass windows more or less pointed toward the four points of a compass. It is said that this cathedral can hold nearly 20,000 people if you count standing room. At the top of the cathedral, high above the altar, where the four stained glass windows come together, is a white cross. Notice the kind of honeycomb in the walls. Whether it was designed for this purpose or not, these walls absorb sound so that it is really quiet inside despite a good number of tourists coming and going. Very impressive!
Our second stop is at what the Brazilians call the Arcos da Lapa (Lapa Arches):
Rio was originally built on a swamp so it was difficult to get fresh water into the city center. They tried canals, but ran into a variety of problems so eventually settled on aqueducts. This one is called the Carioca (what inhabitants of Rio call themselves) Aqueduct and was built in 1750. Eventually, pipelines were built to carry water and the aqueduct was re-purposed as the track for the Santa Teresa bonde (tramway). The tramway opened in 1896 to transport people from the inner city to the uphill neighborhood of Santa Teresa. The Lapa district where this picture was taken used to be Rio's red-light district. It is now known for it's vibrant nightlife and our guide points out several nightclubs known for their music and good restaurants. She also recommends that anyone visiting here come by taxi and leave by taxi as walking around after dark is not safe.
Then we are off to Cosme Velho neighborhood which is home to the Estação de Ferro do Corcovado, the cog railroad which will take us up Corcovado mountain to the Cristo Redentor statue. Cog railroads are commonly used to take passengers up mountains where the average grade is greater than the maximum 7-10% grades used by standard trains. The trains are equipped with one or more cog wheels which fit into teeth on the rack rail so that the train can't slide backwards. Since this is the number one tourist destination in Rio, they no longer sell tickets at the station. You have to buy them as part of a tour or online. When we arrive, there is already a good-sized line waiting for the next train. But it appears that these folks are waiting for the next train while ours will be the one after that. There are four trains operating on this line, each with two cars. Each train can hold 173 people so our tour fits comfortably in one car. Each train has an car pointed uphill and a car pointed downhill. I've ridden on cog railroads up Mt. Washington in New Hampshire and up Pike's Peak in Colorado and know I hate going up the hill backwards so I'm happy when our group is put in the uphill facing car. With tourist demand from the Olympics, the operators spend a fair amount of time making sure that every last seat is full.
Cristo Redentor is located on top of the 700 m (2,300 ft) Corcovado mountain in the middle of the Parque Nacional da Tijuca - the world's largest urban park. This 39 square km preserve is the last remaining piece of the Atlantic rainforest that used to surround Rio. It is actually an advertisement for what can be done in the way of habitat restoration. In the 1800's most of the Parque had been clear-cut for coffee and sugar plantations. The government became worried about erosion and the preservation of Rio's water supply, so they closed the plantations and started replanting native species. Once there was enough habitat they started importing native mammals like coatis, capybara and Capuchin monkeys, but a lot of other animals moved in on their own. There are also a wide variety of birds like toucans and canaries. Here is a view of the Parque from the train with the Cristo Redentor statue in the distance:
Cristo Redentor is located on top of the 700 m (2,300 ft) Corcovado mountain in the middle of the Parque Nacional da Tijuca - the world's largest urban park. This 39 square km preserve is the last remaining piece of the Atlantic rainforest that used to surround Rio. It is actually an advertisement for what can be done in the way of habitat restoration. In the 1800's most of the Parque had been clear-cut for coffee and sugar plantations. The government became worried about erosion and the preservation of Rio's water supply, so they closed the plantations and started replanting native species. Once there was enough habitat they started importing native mammals like coatis, capybara and Capuchin monkeys, but a lot of other animals moved in on their own. There are also a wide variety of birds like toucans and canaries. Here is a view of the Parque from the train with the Cristo Redentor statue in the distance:
We hear a lot of birds, but nothing comes close enough to the train to see. The ride up takes about 20 minutes and then we are let out at the station so distance below the statue. There are stairs up from the station, but we opt for the elevator.
The Cristo Redentor statue was voted by UNESCO as one of the 7 wonders of the modern world. It is the world's largest art deco statue standing 125' tall and weighting 1145 tons. It was designed by french sculptor Paul Landowski and built by Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa. Here is a picture:
For a few minutes, I couldn't figure out why it was considered an art deco statue. Then I walked up close to it and noticed that the outside is covered with something like 60,000 small pieces of soapstone. Landowski is said to have come up with this idea because he thought that concrete (which makes up the interior of the statue) was too crude and rough. This picture makes it look like I was the only one up there, but it was really crowded. This picture gives you a better idea of what it was like:
Apparently taking pictures superimposing yourself on Christ is a thing - such a thing in fact that they supply padding for the photographers to lay on while taking their pictures! There are a lot more than the 346/hr that can come up on the railroad. That is because you can also drive, take a taxi or minivan up to the parking lot located slightly below the train station. From there, you can get into an official van for the ride to the top. This is the way that most people get up here because it is faster than the train. You can also hike up, but that is a much bigger undertaking.
While the statue itself is impressive, the view from the statue is amazing. I spend a considerable amount of time taking pictures that I hope to convert into a panoramic shot. It is pretty hazy, especially toward downtown Rio so I concentrate on the beach areas where the sky is a little clearer. Here is my best attempt:
The body of water toward the middle of the picture is the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon where the rowing venue is located. The thin strip of land above it is the Ipanema neighborhood where we have been staying. To the left of Ipanema is Copacabana beach. Central Rio is off the screen to the left and the Barra Olympic Park is off the screen to the right.
With so many people wanting to see this view, each ticket comes with a scheduled departure from the summit. I figure that Beth can manage to get back down to the train station at the right time, but Sean tends to lose track of time so I spend a few minutes trying to find him. As it turns out, Sean has spent most of his time on the summit trying to find the point where the picture for the GeoGuessr online game were taken. GeoGuessr, which by-the-way is really fun, shows you a picture and you have to figure out exactly where on the globe you are located. You can move around looking for clues (street signs, flags, famous locations, etc) and there are timed and untimed versions, but the closer you are to the original picture site you place you guess, the higher your score. He knows that the picture was taken from the backside and below the statue, but despite climbing up and down numerous flights of stairs looking for the exact spot, he can't quite find it. Finally, I have to persuade him that it is time to head to the waiting area to go back down the hill.
The waiting area for the train is off to the side from where visitors come up and the enclosed area makes it easier for the tour guides to figure out where all their people at. This gets a little stressful for them because there are always a few people that aren't punctual. After rushing around looking for a handful of people, we are all finally ready just about the time that the train is ready to board. The trip back down seemed a lot faster, but this is maybe because we've seen it all before. One thing that I did not see were the murals on the walls near the train station. Here is one of them:
They look pretty new so maybe these were added for the Olympics. In any case, they look nice. A couple Americans in our group decide that they are going to bail out of the tour at this point and it takes them a couple of minutes before our guide understands what they want to do. While we're standing around, I notice a lot of the locals are looking at my pins. I had a similar situation in Beijing where I nearly set off a riot by trading a pin. So this time, I decide to pass on the opportunity to give away a few more of my handouts. Then it is back on the bus toward the hotel.
The people on the full-day tour are heading to Copacabana for lunch where we will drop them and then continue to our hotels. On the way, we can see the Sugerloaf mountain off to the side:
Sugerloaf is a 396 m (1299') granite monolith similar to those found in Yosemite Valley in California and Guilin in China. It is located at the mouth of Guanabara Bay that is the entry-point to Rio from the sea. Basically, these mountains are just a big chunk of hard rock produced long ago by a volcano and originally surrounded by much softer rock. Over time, the soft rock erodes away leaving these monoliths. There are many of them in this area and often the favelas are built up the sides of them. This one is called Sugerloaf because it looks like the traditional cone shape of concentrated, refined loaf sugar produced during the height of the sugarcane trade in Brazil during the 16th century. You can barely see in this picture that there is a gondola that starts from off the screen to the right, has a mid-station on the hill on the right of the picture and then goes up to the top of Sugarloaf mountain. We really wanted to do this tour, but we'll have to save it for another trip.
After about 30 minutes, our bus runs into traffic so I figure that we must be getting close to Copacabana. Sure enough, we turn a corner and see this:
This is the backside of the beach volleyball venue. Like many of the Rio venues, this one is temporary and will disappear soon after the Olympics and Paralympics ends. While I'm sure that no one in Rio really wanted a permanent venue on their most famous beach, it is a shame that there will be so little legacy from these Olympics other than the massive debt. It used to be common for the Olympics to leave some sporting infrastructure for future generations. An example would be the bobsled run and speed-skating oval in Salt Lake City that are still operating today. Los Angeles is still using the Coliseum 80+ years after it was built for the 1932 Summer Olympics. But the high cost of the Olympics and crashing Brazilian economy has made this impossible.
Since we were the first people on the bus, we were also the last people off the bus. But that still gave us enough time to get some lunch before our shuttle to the airport. We were still craving pizza after our failed attempt at the sucos place yesterday and were able to find an open-air place near General Osório station that looked good. It was right next to a Japanese handroll place and we debated going there instead, but finally settled on pizza. It was excellent! Then it was back to the hotel. We still had about 90 minutes before we were picked up so we occupied a couple of tables in the hotel in front of their big-screen TV and watched the Olympics while I worked on pins on my laptop. There were a couple of Nigerians who had "control" of the TV and they wanted to watch basketball which was okay with us. In no time at all, it was time to go outside and wait for our shuttle. When it arrived, there were two people. The first was an employee of the travel company we were with and the second was the driver. The employee's job was to make sure that we got on the shuttle but he would not be going with us. He just wanted to make sure that we understood what was happening because the driver spoke only a couple of words of English.
We had been led to believe that there would be massive traffic on the way to the airport, but once we got through the mess near Copacabana, we had smooth sailing all the way to the airport. Of course, this meant that we had something like 5 hours to kill before our flight boarded. One hour of that was wasted just waiting to check our bags. We had hoped that we would spend the rest of our time in our favorite game of seeing whether we could spend all of our foreign currency before getting on the flight - and because we had used credit cards so often, we had a lot of foreign currency to spend. There did not seem to be any stores in the check-in area so we had to hope that there was a duty-free area on the way to the gate.
We knew that the boarding gate was a long way from the security check-point so there was a lot of area that could have been used for stores. There was a big duty-free area, but it mostly had alcohol, perfume and chocolate. There was a small Olympic store, but it had mostly youth-sized shirts and no pins at all - or at least none after the offerings had been picked over by the Olympic tourists that had already departed Rio. It was getting toward dinner time so we looked for a place to eat. There is a submarine sandwich place and a coffee shop near the duty-free area, but each has a giant line so we move toward the gate.
After a really long walk, we finally made it to the gate area. The good news is that our plane was there. The bad news is that they wouldn't be boarding for another 2.5 hours. There were a couple of shops selling snacky-type food near the gate and Beth and Sean agree to go stand in the long line if I will sit and watch all of the bags. They had not been gone for more than a couple minutes before I was approached by an American who was eyeing the pins on my hat (I'd packed my pin vest). He wanted to know where I'd traded my pins and commented that "I had a few good ones". I've seen this act before so I tried to keep my answers as short and non-committal as possible. These smarmy guys try to strike up conversations mostly with athletes, but occasionally with other collectors in the hope of getting free pins. After a couple minutes, he gives up and walks away - directly toward a group of Korean athletes.
There are a lot of athletes here even though the Olympics still has 6 days to go. This is because each National Olympic Committee has to pay rent to the Rio organizing committee for every day that an athlete is in the Olympic village. So in most cases, as soon as your event is done, off you go. I don't want to be like that American pin collector so I leave the athletes alone even though I do have stuff to trade and instead try to figure out how the athletes are going home. There are flights leaving for Amsterdam, Madrid and London somewhat before our flight. The Chinese are apparently going home through Amsterdam while the Koreans appear to be on our flight. The Chinese seem to have the better idea. Rio to Beijing through Amsterdam is 10,816 miles while Rio to Seoul via San Francisco is 12,270 miles. Maybe the Koreans have United frequent flier miles, but more likely, they are connecting to a Korean Air flight in either Houston or San Francisco.
Beth and Sean finally come back with some food - and a lot of complaints about how slow the food preparation staff is. We eat and then Beth and Sean head off to try to spend some of our foreign currency. About a hour later, they come back with a bag of stuff - mostly t-shirts, but also a bottle of Brazilian rum and a couple neck pillows. We still have plenty of time and money so I go back to one of the two satellite Olympic stores and buy a couple more t-shirts and a neck pillow (which appears to have been produced for the 2014 World Cup of soccer rather than the Olympics).
Then it is finally time to line up to board. Many of the American athletes are flying in business class so we get to see them go past. We think a young woman near us is Madison Kocian, who picked up a team gold medal in gymnastics and a silver in the uneven bars. We are also surprised to see Elana Meyers Taylor, who won a silver medal in women's bobsled at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. After some digging, I discover that Elana also has two caps playing for the US rugby 7s team so it is likely that she was in Rio watching the US team compete.
As usual, we are near the back of the bus. I notice that the Korean women's fencing team has the row directly behind us, but I again pass on the urge to try some pin trading. The flight itself was uneventful. We discover that there is a reason that these neck pillows are still available nearly two years later - they are too thick and force your neck into an uncomfortable position! I'm finally able to get some sleep after I stick it under my seat.
We arrive in Houston in the early morning and have to clear customs before we can get on our flight to San Jose. Sean's bag and mine arrive quite rapidly, but we wait a long time for Beth's bag so by the time that we get to the TSA checkpoint, almost everyone from our flight is gone. The US Olympic team members had been cleared through customs separately, but this must have taken some time because they are still going through the TSA screen when we arrive. I put my backpack through the metal detector and am not surprised when one of the agents comes over and says that they'll have to open my bag. I know that they are seeing my Olympic pin bag so I open that up. Satisfied, they let me go.
I am sitting on a bench putting my shoes and belt back on when all of the TSA agents run over to one of the metal detectors. Does someone have a gun or a bomb? It takes a minute to realize that I should have said medal detector because this is apparently what happens when a person tries to put their newly won medal (gold in this case) through the metal detector. I figure out later that this young woman is Ginny Thrasher, who actually won Team USA's first gold medal in Rio in the 10 m air rifle. Ms. Thrasher is more than happy to have her picture taken with any or all of the TSA agents.
While we are standing there watching, a person hands me this pin:
I look up and see four-time Olympic gold medalist and 14 time grand-slam champion Serena Williams standing there. Serena is probably disappointed with her performance in Rio where she and her sister Venus lost in doubles tennis in the first round and then she lost in the 3rd round of women's singles. But I will always remember that she gave me this pin. What a great ending to our trip to Rio!
I hope that you have enjoyed this blog - even given how long it took to complete it. Please join us again in 2018 when we (hopefully) attend the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang Korea.
Steps for the day - 11,708
Steps for the trip - 123,675
The Cristo Redentor statue was voted by UNESCO as one of the 7 wonders of the modern world. It is the world's largest art deco statue standing 125' tall and weighting 1145 tons. It was designed by french sculptor Paul Landowski and built by Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa. Here is a picture:
For a few minutes, I couldn't figure out why it was considered an art deco statue. Then I walked up close to it and noticed that the outside is covered with something like 60,000 small pieces of soapstone. Landowski is said to have come up with this idea because he thought that concrete (which makes up the interior of the statue) was too crude and rough. This picture makes it look like I was the only one up there, but it was really crowded. This picture gives you a better idea of what it was like:
Apparently taking pictures superimposing yourself on Christ is a thing - such a thing in fact that they supply padding for the photographers to lay on while taking their pictures! There are a lot more than the 346/hr that can come up on the railroad. That is because you can also drive, take a taxi or minivan up to the parking lot located slightly below the train station. From there, you can get into an official van for the ride to the top. This is the way that most people get up here because it is faster than the train. You can also hike up, but that is a much bigger undertaking.
While the statue itself is impressive, the view from the statue is amazing. I spend a considerable amount of time taking pictures that I hope to convert into a panoramic shot. It is pretty hazy, especially toward downtown Rio so I concentrate on the beach areas where the sky is a little clearer. Here is my best attempt:
The body of water toward the middle of the picture is the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon where the rowing venue is located. The thin strip of land above it is the Ipanema neighborhood where we have been staying. To the left of Ipanema is Copacabana beach. Central Rio is off the screen to the left and the Barra Olympic Park is off the screen to the right.
With so many people wanting to see this view, each ticket comes with a scheduled departure from the summit. I figure that Beth can manage to get back down to the train station at the right time, but Sean tends to lose track of time so I spend a few minutes trying to find him. As it turns out, Sean has spent most of his time on the summit trying to find the point where the picture for the GeoGuessr online game were taken. GeoGuessr, which by-the-way is really fun, shows you a picture and you have to figure out exactly where on the globe you are located. You can move around looking for clues (street signs, flags, famous locations, etc) and there are timed and untimed versions, but the closer you are to the original picture site you place you guess, the higher your score. He knows that the picture was taken from the backside and below the statue, but despite climbing up and down numerous flights of stairs looking for the exact spot, he can't quite find it. Finally, I have to persuade him that it is time to head to the waiting area to go back down the hill.
The waiting area for the train is off to the side from where visitors come up and the enclosed area makes it easier for the tour guides to figure out where all their people at. This gets a little stressful for them because there are always a few people that aren't punctual. After rushing around looking for a handful of people, we are all finally ready just about the time that the train is ready to board. The trip back down seemed a lot faster, but this is maybe because we've seen it all before. One thing that I did not see were the murals on the walls near the train station. Here is one of them:
They look pretty new so maybe these were added for the Olympics. In any case, they look nice. A couple Americans in our group decide that they are going to bail out of the tour at this point and it takes them a couple of minutes before our guide understands what they want to do. While we're standing around, I notice a lot of the locals are looking at my pins. I had a similar situation in Beijing where I nearly set off a riot by trading a pin. So this time, I decide to pass on the opportunity to give away a few more of my handouts. Then it is back on the bus toward the hotel.
The people on the full-day tour are heading to Copacabana for lunch where we will drop them and then continue to our hotels. On the way, we can see the Sugerloaf mountain off to the side:
Sugerloaf is a 396 m (1299') granite monolith similar to those found in Yosemite Valley in California and Guilin in China. It is located at the mouth of Guanabara Bay that is the entry-point to Rio from the sea. Basically, these mountains are just a big chunk of hard rock produced long ago by a volcano and originally surrounded by much softer rock. Over time, the soft rock erodes away leaving these monoliths. There are many of them in this area and often the favelas are built up the sides of them. This one is called Sugerloaf because it looks like the traditional cone shape of concentrated, refined loaf sugar produced during the height of the sugarcane trade in Brazil during the 16th century. You can barely see in this picture that there is a gondola that starts from off the screen to the right, has a mid-station on the hill on the right of the picture and then goes up to the top of Sugarloaf mountain. We really wanted to do this tour, but we'll have to save it for another trip.
After about 30 minutes, our bus runs into traffic so I figure that we must be getting close to Copacabana. Sure enough, we turn a corner and see this:
This is the backside of the beach volleyball venue. Like many of the Rio venues, this one is temporary and will disappear soon after the Olympics and Paralympics ends. While I'm sure that no one in Rio really wanted a permanent venue on their most famous beach, it is a shame that there will be so little legacy from these Olympics other than the massive debt. It used to be common for the Olympics to leave some sporting infrastructure for future generations. An example would be the bobsled run and speed-skating oval in Salt Lake City that are still operating today. Los Angeles is still using the Coliseum 80+ years after it was built for the 1932 Summer Olympics. But the high cost of the Olympics and crashing Brazilian economy has made this impossible.
Since we were the first people on the bus, we were also the last people off the bus. But that still gave us enough time to get some lunch before our shuttle to the airport. We were still craving pizza after our failed attempt at the sucos place yesterday and were able to find an open-air place near General Osório station that looked good. It was right next to a Japanese handroll place and we debated going there instead, but finally settled on pizza. It was excellent! Then it was back to the hotel. We still had about 90 minutes before we were picked up so we occupied a couple of tables in the hotel in front of their big-screen TV and watched the Olympics while I worked on pins on my laptop. There were a couple of Nigerians who had "control" of the TV and they wanted to watch basketball which was okay with us. In no time at all, it was time to go outside and wait for our shuttle. When it arrived, there were two people. The first was an employee of the travel company we were with and the second was the driver. The employee's job was to make sure that we got on the shuttle but he would not be going with us. He just wanted to make sure that we understood what was happening because the driver spoke only a couple of words of English.
We had been led to believe that there would be massive traffic on the way to the airport, but once we got through the mess near Copacabana, we had smooth sailing all the way to the airport. Of course, this meant that we had something like 5 hours to kill before our flight boarded. One hour of that was wasted just waiting to check our bags. We had hoped that we would spend the rest of our time in our favorite game of seeing whether we could spend all of our foreign currency before getting on the flight - and because we had used credit cards so often, we had a lot of foreign currency to spend. There did not seem to be any stores in the check-in area so we had to hope that there was a duty-free area on the way to the gate.
We knew that the boarding gate was a long way from the security check-point so there was a lot of area that could have been used for stores. There was a big duty-free area, but it mostly had alcohol, perfume and chocolate. There was a small Olympic store, but it had mostly youth-sized shirts and no pins at all - or at least none after the offerings had been picked over by the Olympic tourists that had already departed Rio. It was getting toward dinner time so we looked for a place to eat. There is a submarine sandwich place and a coffee shop near the duty-free area, but each has a giant line so we move toward the gate.
After a really long walk, we finally made it to the gate area. The good news is that our plane was there. The bad news is that they wouldn't be boarding for another 2.5 hours. There were a couple of shops selling snacky-type food near the gate and Beth and Sean agree to go stand in the long line if I will sit and watch all of the bags. They had not been gone for more than a couple minutes before I was approached by an American who was eyeing the pins on my hat (I'd packed my pin vest). He wanted to know where I'd traded my pins and commented that "I had a few good ones". I've seen this act before so I tried to keep my answers as short and non-committal as possible. These smarmy guys try to strike up conversations mostly with athletes, but occasionally with other collectors in the hope of getting free pins. After a couple minutes, he gives up and walks away - directly toward a group of Korean athletes.
There are a lot of athletes here even though the Olympics still has 6 days to go. This is because each National Olympic Committee has to pay rent to the Rio organizing committee for every day that an athlete is in the Olympic village. So in most cases, as soon as your event is done, off you go. I don't want to be like that American pin collector so I leave the athletes alone even though I do have stuff to trade and instead try to figure out how the athletes are going home. There are flights leaving for Amsterdam, Madrid and London somewhat before our flight. The Chinese are apparently going home through Amsterdam while the Koreans appear to be on our flight. The Chinese seem to have the better idea. Rio to Beijing through Amsterdam is 10,816 miles while Rio to Seoul via San Francisco is 12,270 miles. Maybe the Koreans have United frequent flier miles, but more likely, they are connecting to a Korean Air flight in either Houston or San Francisco.
Beth and Sean finally come back with some food - and a lot of complaints about how slow the food preparation staff is. We eat and then Beth and Sean head off to try to spend some of our foreign currency. About a hour later, they come back with a bag of stuff - mostly t-shirts, but also a bottle of Brazilian rum and a couple neck pillows. We still have plenty of time and money so I go back to one of the two satellite Olympic stores and buy a couple more t-shirts and a neck pillow (which appears to have been produced for the 2014 World Cup of soccer rather than the Olympics).
Then it is finally time to line up to board. Many of the American athletes are flying in business class so we get to see them go past. We think a young woman near us is Madison Kocian, who picked up a team gold medal in gymnastics and a silver in the uneven bars. We are also surprised to see Elana Meyers Taylor, who won a silver medal in women's bobsled at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. After some digging, I discover that Elana also has two caps playing for the US rugby 7s team so it is likely that she was in Rio watching the US team compete.
As usual, we are near the back of the bus. I notice that the Korean women's fencing team has the row directly behind us, but I again pass on the urge to try some pin trading. The flight itself was uneventful. We discover that there is a reason that these neck pillows are still available nearly two years later - they are too thick and force your neck into an uncomfortable position! I'm finally able to get some sleep after I stick it under my seat.
We arrive in Houston in the early morning and have to clear customs before we can get on our flight to San Jose. Sean's bag and mine arrive quite rapidly, but we wait a long time for Beth's bag so by the time that we get to the TSA checkpoint, almost everyone from our flight is gone. The US Olympic team members had been cleared through customs separately, but this must have taken some time because they are still going through the TSA screen when we arrive. I put my backpack through the metal detector and am not surprised when one of the agents comes over and says that they'll have to open my bag. I know that they are seeing my Olympic pin bag so I open that up. Satisfied, they let me go.
I am sitting on a bench putting my shoes and belt back on when all of the TSA agents run over to one of the metal detectors. Does someone have a gun or a bomb? It takes a minute to realize that I should have said medal detector because this is apparently what happens when a person tries to put their newly won medal (gold in this case) through the metal detector. I figure out later that this young woman is Ginny Thrasher, who actually won Team USA's first gold medal in Rio in the 10 m air rifle. Ms. Thrasher is more than happy to have her picture taken with any or all of the TSA agents.
While we are standing there watching, a person hands me this pin:
I look up and see four-time Olympic gold medalist and 14 time grand-slam champion Serena Williams standing there. Serena is probably disappointed with her performance in Rio where she and her sister Venus lost in doubles tennis in the first round and then she lost in the 3rd round of women's singles. But I will always remember that she gave me this pin. What a great ending to our trip to Rio!
I hope that you have enjoyed this blog - even given how long it took to complete it. Please join us again in 2018 when we (hopefully) attend the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang Korea.
Steps for the day - 11,708
Steps for the trip - 123,675
