Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [126]
Mary and Jan, feeling their way gingerly into the new cuisine, stick with familiar meats and a healthy assortment of vegetables, grains, and fruits. The two of us, having eaten sanitized American versions of feijoada before, are eager to try the real deal, and we dive in more fully. Cheryl samples a little of everything except the earthiest meats, while Bill skimps on the sides and desserts to leave ample room for all the pork and beef parts. The cooking isn’t stellar, but the bounty is, leaving all of us happily satiated.
When the waiters bring the check, the older one, grinning infectiously, hands each of us a souvenir caipirinha glass with the name and logo of the restaurant. It’s a goofy memento, the kind of kitschy curio we stopped collecting years ago, but we keep the tumblers and haul them all the way home. They will be a reminder for life of an indulgent Thanksgiving afternoon in Rio de Janeiro.
As the urban energy ebbed in the historic Centro, it flowed straight toward the shore, especially the beaches of Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, and, more recently, the relatively distant Barra de Tijuca. Though it may seem odd today, most of the world, including Rio, didn’t discover beaches as potential playgrounds until the twentieth century. Before then, they attracted little interest except as handy anchorages for fishing boats, or for the adventurous, serene spots for a stroll or a swim. In Rio and elsewhere, few people could even reach a grand beach before modern transportation provided access on rails, roads, and airways.
Using tunnels cut through the mountains south of downtown, trams arrived in 1892 at Copacabana, the closest of the major beaches, prompting the construction of some isolated summer residences. More substantial development didn’t begin for another thirty years, until a wealthy visionary opened the opulent Copacabana Palace as a retreat in Rio for international royalty and the merely rich of the world. Within the following thirty years, the population of the neighborhood increased tenfold and started spilling farther south toward Ipanema, only a small bohemian enclave at the time.
Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes enjoyed that offbeat spirit in Ipanema but accidentally helped to change it forever. Drinking beer together one day in a scruffy bar by the beach, they watched a lovely young girl walk by, swaying her hips gracefully. Jobim composed a lilting bossa nova score to extol her graceful cadence and Vinicius contributed lyrics for the tribute. When João and Astrud Gilberto teamed up with Stan Getz the next year, in 1963, to record “The Girl from Ipanema,” suddenly every man on earth—most of all, twenty-one-year-old Bill—wanted to rush to the area and fall into step right behind her.
Bill spots her on Sunday, dozens of times, and again just as often on Monday when we return to the sand for a second visit. She’s everywhere along the seaside, generally arm in arm with the Boy from Ipanema. Wherever we look in the crowds on the long, broad shore, we see them sashaying and playing, usually in such a carefree, guileless manner that it grabs our attention over and over. The attire is different each time—though always so skimpy that it never taxes the imagination—and most reassuringly for old, overclothed white folks like the two of us, the ages, shapes, and skin colors encompass the full range of human possibilities. The Girl and Boy are forever young but also maturing well, hefty and light, lanky and squat, black, brown, bronze, pink, and every hue in between.
Cheryl marvels at the jaunty, easygoing mood. “This is such a local scene, not at all like a stilted tourist beach or a pretentious resort beach.” No hotels or other buildings intrude on the atmosphere. The closest structures—mainly tasteful mid-rise, multifamily residences interspersed with an occasional hotel or restaurant—sit well back from the sand across a broad boulevard, certainly