History and CultureThe City of Rio de Janeiro is a wonderful and rich city of culture and history. It was built in 1565 by Portuguese explorers and in the 1800s it started to grow very rapidly and began to look like it does today. It used to be South America's most visited city but it hit a peak in the late 1900s and began to decline. A really popular place to visit there is the Copacabana beach. Every year it is just full to bursting on New Year's Eve.We might visit it later. It's just a couple blocks down from our hotel. The most exciting thing about Rio right now is the FIFA World Cup. The streets are packed and the hotels are all full. But more of that later.
What we did
We woke up and ate the complementary breakfast at our wonderful hotel. Then we all got in a taxi to make our way to the first stop of the day, The Christ Redeemer! Its a huge statue in Rio that was first suggested in the mid-1850s. It was finally finished in 1931 for a total cost of $3,300,000 (in today's money). It is 30 meters tall and 28 meters wide. It gets 2,000,000 people who come and climb to the top each year, there are 220 steps to get to the top. The Christ Redeemer is a great historical site and shows how religion is important in Brazil because all of the money used to build it was donated from the private sector. When we were done look around at the Christ Redeemer, we went to a nice restaurant called Mr. Lams's to eat lunch.