After seeing the major sights of Rio earlier this week, we were free to take the last few days a little slower and just enjoy living a lazy life here in the city.

We’ve caught up on some travel schooling, good old maths and English but have also been looking at some new topics, Brazil and the rainforest. 

One afternoon we took a trip out to the nearby Botanical gardens, which were so different to all the national trust gardens we visit frequently at home. Here we walked along impressive palm tree walkways, areas of jungle woodland where colourful toucans were flying above our heads and cheeky monkeys swung from trees! Molly LOvED it!!!! It was lovely to just wander slowly around, kids running freely and just listen to the sounds going on around us.

Yesterday we spent a lot of time on the beautiful ipanema beach among all the gorgeous Brazilians! (There’s some skimpy swimwear here!!!) We found a great area near poste 10 where there was a bank of sand just off the shoreline, so the girls could happily splash around in the warm lagoon area that was created when the tide went out. Time just passed by as we enjoyed ourselves, chilling with our aqua de coca, and we dashed home before sundown for dinner.

Last night we had an exciting lightning storm in the middle of the night! The rain hammered down so hard out of the sky and the noise of the thunder, and flashes of lightning made for an exciting night!

This morning the humidity was still very high and it threatened to storm at any moment, so we quickly gobbled down breakfast, dressed and walked down a few blocks to the nearby feria hippie market. A market in a central square filled full of lovely little stalls selling colourful artwork, handmade jewellery, clothing, leather bags and so much more. We picked up a few small souvenirs, a Rio sarong for Molly and a pretty dream catcher for Daisy.

This afternoon we have comtinued to be lazy, we took a walk to the beach but then got caught in a sudden downpour, so got home a little wet! Looks like the sun is set to reappear tomorrow, so perhaps another beach trip then.

Lucy xx