Our saga proceeds in Rio de Janeiro...

Alexandre came up with the idea: "Lets race on this Sunday, there is a biathlon happening in Cabo Frio?!". 

 

Right on!! Matching workouts and tourism together is always the best! Flor was ready to go too, even that we had planned to visit the statue "Christ the Redeemer", for that day.

I guess she was afraid because I told her that I wanted to get there riding bikes, its a great climb!!

hahaha Maybe we can do that on the next year!! ;)

 

On the last minute, Alex decided to not go, he wanted to enjoy his son, who doesn`t live in Rio and was there just for a few days. This kid is going to be a triathlete for sure, he had joined us on a bunch of swim, bike and run workouts!!

 

On that Sunday, Arthur, with only 8 years old, rode his bike for more than 12 miles racing his father on a running day! While Flor and I were on the way to Cabo Frio!!

The race start was delayed, and the distances were nothing precise!! But as the plan was more than anything to have fun, it was all great!!

On the picture above is the start. I am in black, on the side of that crazy guy!! I can see him running like that on a movie like "Saving Private Ryan"!! lol

Love this brave spirit though!! Wondering for how long he could hold those balls to the wall!!?

It was a very fast race! I won those 400m swim and 4k run in a  little less than 20 minutes.

 

Afterwards we took some advantage of the amazing beach over there, and waited for the awards.

Afraid of the traffic jam later, we hurried up to start up the trip back...

Just leaving Cabo Frio, we saw a sign saying "House of the Flower"

Flower in Spanish (or Portuguese) is Flor, and Flor is also a nick name for Florencias!

 

Kinda joking I followed the sign which was saying that apparently Florencia would have a house over there!! We kept going for a while and started to get far from the road. We were almost giving up when we finally saw the house!

 

At first sight we were kinda disappointed, it seemed only concrete ruins, so we parked the car to at least get a picture with the sign "Casa da Flor".

While we were shooting the picture, an old man left from the next door and asked if we were there to see the House of the Flower. With no much attention I told him we only ended up there due to the curious name of the house.

 

He explained that everything in there has the shape of a flower, and invited us to come in. He advised it would cost one dollar for each and I need to confess that I was afraid of a racketeering and evilly I thought "what a petty thief, investing all this chat to get only one dollar!". Going in I got surprised with such a wealthy and brilliant house and ended up giving him another five dollars, sadly this was all I had on my wallet.

 

I was not the only one to mistaken that place, afterwards the very kind man, told us that many people disregards that façade with no grace, seen from the street. He continued saying that Mr. Santos would never be worried to call the attention of others. Instead, his worries were to make the back of the house look great, so he could enjoy his friends with the beautiful view to the mountains. In other words, he made a house with the back door in the front!

A work of art! Gabriel Joaquim dos Santos started to build this house when he was 20 years old, and he only used shards and left-overs that he found on the streets. He would also kindly buy some shards from the neighborhood kids!! The house is not only endowed by the visible beauty, but it has also a brilliant architecture of rain rails and a construction designed to drive the wind, what would even be useful to maintain an artisanal fridge.

Waldivey, who received us on the entrance, told us that Gabriel used to not like to receive contributions in their integral state, he would not see any grace on breaking them apart and would only find the beauty, on  giving a new life to those shards and left-overs that were seen only as trash before.

How nice is this kind of tourism of popular art and knowledge!
We never thought we would have so much fun on this improvised trip!!

Check their website out!! http://www.casadaflor.org.br/intro.htm 

When almost arriving in Rio, we decided to extend the trip to Niteroi. I always had the curiosity to watch that Oscar Niemeyer`s construction that seems like a spacecraft!