So after 11 months of travelling we arrived at our final destination, Rio de Janeiro. It was a strange mixture of excitement both from being in Rio and also being so close to going home. Much of our time in Rio we spent like a normal holiday, relaxing by the pool and enjoying the first sunshine we had experienced in quite a few months.

The beaches in Rio are obviously what the place is best known for and they are magnificent. They are also well used and looked after which hasn’t always been the case elsewhere. As well as the sunbathing they are also used as an outdoor gym and have courts for volleyball (beach and head), racket ball and the inevitable football pitches. Surprisingly there were actually less people playing football than anything else and the standard in the games we watched were not much above PSFC!

We took a day out to go sightseeing on a guided tour. We started at the Christ the Redeemer which up to that point we had not seen. The reason for this became clearer as we approached. Although it is large (38m) it isn’t the dominant monument that the images of it suggest. However the views from here are amazing and allow you to appreciate the sprawl of the city below. From there we stopped off at the Maracana stadium and the start point off the Carnival as well as the Selaron steps. We ended up on the cable car up to Sugar Loaf mountain. The views from here are from the opposite side of Rio and look back towards the Christ the Redeemer. We watched the sunset over Rio from here as the city lit up below.

It’s probably inevitable after spending so much time in different places around the world that you start to make comparisons. Perhaps understandably with thoughts of returning home also at the front of our minds many of those are with Edinburgh. This may seem unlikely or even unfair at first but actually our home city stands up fairly well to any such comparisons.