Parque Lage

One of Rio's many beautiful attractions is Parque Lage, a city park with a large mansion that serves as an art school and performance space. It sits right at the foot of Corcovado, the mountain in the middle of Rio on which the Christ the Redeemer statue sits, and in fact one can hike a trail beginning in Parque Lage right up to the statue. We never made it the entire way, since it's very steep and actually rather long, but we did have a great time visiting the park and seeing a cello concert there.

Jon and his moustache were overwhelmed by the majesty of the park and its mansion.

Annie, however, was not. We consoled her with Rita's brush, to which she quickly got attached. She was ticked off when Jon decided he needed to do some on-the-spot moustache grooming.

But she warmed up to the idea pretty quickly.

Here we are in one of Dave's infamous self-timed pictures at the reflecting pool in the mansion, where there is now a swanky cafe. Annie's prominent belly was an accident. It's hard to keep that thing covered up.

The cello concert was in a beautiful hall of the mansion and featured musicians from all over the world. We saw a couple of Brazilians, one French Canadian guy, and a French guy.

Annie was content to read the program for about 10 minutes, but then we reached the end of her attention span, so she and I went and hung out in the park while the Meeks enjoyed the music.