´Your eyes are blue. My english is very bad.´

Top marks for Bruno the Argentinian´s valiant efforts to flirt despite comprehensive language barrier...
Have pulled through today´s hangover by resolutely sleeping til 11 am this morning and then heading straight for Copacabana beach. Unsurprisingly it´s absolutely rammed today - spectacular display of bikinis on show it must be said. Also love the men who do nothing except stand and pose for hours on end. Must get a bit dull. Pottered down there toute seule, armed with book, water and Bob´s burger (ah the joy of the universally understood word ´cheeseburger´) and settled down to people watch. Waves still massive so paddled around in a pathetic fashion for a while avoiding them before hurrying back to hunker down on ubiquitous Copacabana sarong.
Last night - LAPA.
Post-blog I wandered back to the bar to tuck into a caipirinha, and, as if sent by above, a wingwoman appeared - June the Norwegian who is similarly travelling alone and having the time of her life. Turns out (I was starting to get worried about his) that Che Legarto is unusually quiet this week, and not quite living up to its party hostel name (wasn´t sure if I´d just over estimated what a party hostel entails). Anyway, a few games of sh*thead later with Michael the barman and his MEAN rules, the bar was starting to fill up. A group of about 30 of us headed out to Lapa. The bus driver was completely nuts - it was literally like a rollercoaster. Apparently there is no stopping at red lights at night, ostensibly so that people don´t carjack you. As this was a bus I´m not quite sure how the rule applied. Held on for dear life and got there in one piece.
Lapa was AWESOME - streets all closed off, lots of little stalls flogging large cups of caipi-anything for 7 reais. We wandered around en masse (feel extremely smug today that I got home with wallet casually still in one piece in my pocket) through the packed streets. Music belting out of all the bars, people everywhere, very hyper Friday night vibe. A huge white bridge marks out the area, so we stuck close to that. Finished up at 3am climbing the whole way up the Lapa steps with Verena the German (plus Udo, who it turns out is not her boyfriend but a highly exasperating and almost silent friend of friend that she was NOT happy to have been dumped with) and June, plus two ever hopeful random Brazilians. Wended our way through the kissing couples, up past the weed area, to the top. Reminded me very strongly of the layout of the steps in Aldeburgh. Slightly different view. Steps themselves are stunning: designed quite recently by a local designer, the sides of each step - so you can see them as you walk up - plus the walls are covered in tiles, with a blue, a yellow and a red area. Interspersed among the plain tiles are beautiful individual one, seemingly random collection obviously from different sources. My favourites were a blue cat kicking a ball (reminded me of Sophles´mad crazy aunt cat-kicking-pearl brooch) and a stunning copy of Van Gogh´s self portrait. At the very top is an enormous Brazilian flag set into a red background that curves around the wall. Was kind of Madrid/Gaudi-esque. We sat by that til about 3.30 til wandering down and home. Last memory was seeing a chapel picked out in lights atop a hill looking over the streets.