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Ipanema-Carnival-street-party
Ipanema-Carnival-street-party

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

One of my greatest ever trips

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio NYC, plus Florianopolis, Belnario Camboriu, and Curitiba. In 2007 my 2 month trip which turned out to be one of the two best around the world journeys I have ever done.

Anyone for coffee?

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Food, food and more food, you gotta love Tokyo. It is certainly one of my favourite cities in the world. In fact I was here for the first time in April this year and loved it so much I’m back in December.

Joan and Bill from Wiltshire

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

In fact we were having dinner in Bath, I was travelling to Dorchester the next day with Bill to visit his brother Alan who was a guest of Her Majesty.

Gold Hill, Shaftesbury

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Gold Hill is a steep cobbled street in the town of Shaftesbury in the English county of Dorset. It is famous for its picturesque appearance; the view looking down from the top of the street has been described as “one of the most romantic sights in England

Lisbon

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Fado  is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Portugal, but probably with much earlier origins.

Lisbon restaurant

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Lisbon is a great city for food as you can clearly see. 🙂

Rio de Janeiro NYE Copacabana

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

December 2007 and the city is winding up for New Years Eve. After a couple of weeks I will go to Curitiba to meet my friend Craig aka Sudzy from Australia, then after visiting a few cities we will head back to Rio for Carnival

Sergio, do you think our ship will ever come in?

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Beautiful Copacabana and the first of nine cruise ships arrive for NYE

Curitiba

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

A nice city south of Sao Paulo however one visit is enough, there are more interesting places further south as you will see.

Curitiba

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

I met my friend Craig from Australia and we set out for Florianopolis.

Florianopolis.

Florianopolis beach

Florianopolis wonderful Brazilian city, the photo above is Joaquina beach which is famous throughout the world for surfing.

Florianopolis.

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Barra da Lagoa Beach has good waves, clear water and a tropical rain-forest, this makes Barra da Lagoa the kind of place you can easily loose track of time! Just sit back and watch the pretty girls at play.

Balneário Camboriú a Brazilian surprise

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio NYC

We had never heard of this place until we were in Florianopolis and what a fabulous surprise it turned out to be.

Balneário Camboriú

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

A similar statue to Rio de Janeiro. Balneário Camboriú is famous for the cable car which (uniquely in the world) links the two beaches of Balneário Camboriú and Laranjeiras. The town is located 10 km (6.2 mi) south of the city of Itajaí and 80 km (50 mi) north of the state capital, Florianópolis, and has a population of 94,344 (2007 census office estimate), which swells to over one million in the summer.

Balneário Camboriú

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Antonio cycled around the world for UNESCO in 1999, on his trip the both times he was robbed was in Australia while the Olympics were on in 2000. And people say Brazil is dangerous. :)

Paraty

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

It’s Probably not hard to guess why this is my favourite photo, a rose between two thorns, I don’t think so. :) Paraty grew in the 18th century as a strategically important port for exporting the gold mined in Minas Gerais. When shipments in nearby Rio began to attract the attention and ambition of pirates and privateers from rival European powers, the Portuguese began using Paraty as their safe port for getting their gold to Lisbon.

Magnificent Brazilian girl

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

To see more of this beautiful creature just follow THIS LINK.

Take me to your leader

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Once a year, when the great Rio De Janeiro carnival takes place, the coastal town Paraty which is located 250 km south west to Rio, holds a unique carnival. In Paraty’s Mud Carnival – (Portuguese: Bloco da lama) the costumes that its participants wear is black sticky mud which is smeared on their bodies. The carnival preserves the ancient local tradition when the Indians smeared their bodies with black mud for medical reasons, and held ritual ceremonies in order to bring cure to the ill. In contrary to Rio carnival where the participants wear marvelous colored costumes, in Paraty carnival the fiesta is based mostly on the simplicity of the junction between men and nature.

 Back to Rio for Carnival

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

After a fascinating trip down south we head back to Rio for Carnival.

 Carnival in Ipanema

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Ipanema Carnival street party was one of the best nights in my life with my friend Dave Wylie. There was a “bloco” going on in front of the restaurant.  A “bloco” is a block party during carnival.  There are hundreds of them just in Rio. They are organized by local Carnival groups and the best ones move up the food chain of blocks to become the big samba schools that put on the big Carnival parades each year that Rio is famous for. We had a window table at “Garota de Ipanema” with of course means “The Girl from Ipanema”, and this is the exact spot the song was written in 1962, with music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel.

With Dave Wylie at Garota de Ipanema

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Here I am with my good friend Dave Wylie at our window table at Garota de Ipanema. All night the action was all around us as you can see from the photos. As I said earlier Ipanema Carnival it was one of the best and most memorable nights of my life. Another equally memorable night was 4 weeks earlier, New Years Eve on Copacabana, simply awesome.

Garota de Ipanema

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

This crazy guy was so funny, he was absolutely smashed and spoke to Dave Wylie who is fluent in Portuguese, he said “Voce sabe quem eu sou?” (do you know who I am?”) “Eu sou o deus de dor da cabesa”) (I am the God of Headaches”).

I love New York

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

As I said before New York is my favourite city, I like to say to friends, if the cities of the world could be likened to a horse race, New York would win by 10 lengths over the next bunch of cities which would include Paris, London, Sydney, Bangkok, Tokyo, Rome, Budapest, AmsterdamRio De Janeiro & Cape Town, not necessarily in that order.

Gallaghers steakhouse 52nd st

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio NYC

Surf and Turf, say no more.

Phil Barkin and Gordon Shanks

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio NYC

  Phil now lives in Manila and both these guys love to visit Pattaya.

UPDATE, it’s October 2017 & Phil has moved back to Florida.

Thanks for visiting and sharing my memories.

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio NYC

 I hope you enjoyed my  Tokyo London Lisbon Rio NYC photo blog.

                       Here are some more posts to check out
 

           

 Zagreb Croatia                      Rio de Janeiro                  Brisbane River 

Zagreb Croatia bars restaurants        a7ff7566-9628-434d-a2b1-8c6e8b9a9021       IMG_0100

       

     Koh Samui                                   Korea                                  London

32780a6c-baf6-428a-bd71-68b1bed30b4c         Changdeokgung Palace (2)        IMG_7042

         Bangkok                                   Osaka                                     Pattaya

Soi Cowboy (25)          Osaka 1st night (17)       Walking St Pattaya is wild & sexy 

                                     

             Chiang Mai                      Pattaya                      Chao Phraya river

Chiang Mai with Tone        9a1fec74-4461-46cd-8663-97f5893c8f6e (1)   191de3bb-38fc-45cd-bce7-ef24081c554b

 
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That’s all folks

1g Duck

Counter only started June 16 2020.

Author: David Herd

My history, particularly over the last 30 years is dominated by overseas travel. I sold my home in Australia October 20th 2011 and have have been living in Thailand since then. I don’t know where the time has gone? It seems like you go to sleep one night, wake up the next morning, and 20 years have flashed by. Not sure how many years I have left, however I have enjoyed a wonderful charmed life, and if it all ended today I would leave this world with no regrets. I was born in Sydney halfway through the last century, started my travels in the 60s with the usual U.K. Europe adventure at the age of 20, back to Australia and worked in Sydney, Melbourne & Adelaide in Sales & Marketing with multinational companies including Sanyo, Canon & Remington. Engaged to be married 3 times and never quite made it to the alter, finally realized by the mid 90s I was not cut out for "long term relationships" so I moved to the Gold Coast in Queensland in January 1987, worked for a couple of banks as a Financial Planner, I took a year off work in 1998 to travel and never went back to full time work again, after 25 fun filled years on the Coast I packed up and moved to Thailand. What is the purpose of this blog? Well I really want to use it to record my travel experiences & to display my photographs, give and receive travel tips, comment on places I visit, restaurants I eat in and use it to replace the autobiography I intended to write, apart from all that it helps me fill in my day. :) I moved to Thailand mainly because I wanted to keep travelling while my health allowed me to, there are huge advantages being closer to all the places I want to visit. Cost of living in Thailand is around 35% of the cost in Australia, plus flights are 50% cheaper because you are much closer to everywhere. ???? Consequently I am able to travel to many more places compared to living in Australia. Having said all that, it is & has always been my intention to return to Australia when my travelling is finished, I predict this will happen around 2021.

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