bursting the bubble

We made it out of the Olympic Park bubble on Sunday afternoon after work. Olympic Park is in the neighborhood of Barra in Rio, which is about an hour or more southwest of city center as well as the beach areas of Copacabana and Ipanema. We took the bus and subway into Ipanema, which felt like a different world from where we are in Barra. A wrong exit out of the subway turned out to be a silver lining, because the long walk through the vibrant neighborhood to get to where we meant to be ended up being the best part of the day. We finally found our way to the Hippie Fair, a weekly market that's somewhere between a flea market and an arts fair. After some time there, we wandered a couple blocks over to the beach for a quick caipirinha before grabbing some food at a streetfront restaurant. By then it was way past our bedtime, so we decided on an Uber back to Olympic Park. Five of us in an Uber for an hour wasn't the best of ideas, but we finally made it back to the bubble, albeit for a rough "morning" when our shift started a few hours later.